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THE 

sEPIC ® 
OF AN ALP 






Starr H.Nichols 



Monte 
Rosa 

Nichols 



MONTE ROSA 



THE EPIC OF AN ALP 



BY 



STARR H^NICHOLS 




jj^S^X^ 



DuC 1882 ^ 

BOSTON ^ashi^ 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 

(Cfce ftfoer#&e #re£& Camfcri&ge 

1883 



*L\ 



.lit Mt 



Copyright, 1882, 
By STARR H. NICHOLS. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Company. 



To 
MY BELOVED WIFE, 

FOR WHOSE PLEASURE THIS PUBLICATION WAS BEGUN- 
FINISHED, ALAS! TOO LATE. 



CONTENTS. 

♦ 

BOOK FIRST. 

PAGE 

I. Zermatt 1 

II. The Mountain 19 

III. The Glacier 34 

IV. St. Theodule 48 

V. Milan 53 

BOOK SECOND. 

I. The Ascent . . 59 

II. The Summit . . 88 

III. With Nature 98 

IV. The Descent 121 

V. Pulvis et Umbra . . . . . . . 145 



MONTE ROSA. 



ZERMATT. 

By the long ranges of Valaisian Alps 
That crowd the narrowed skies with majesty, 
Where hoarsely cries the new-born river Wisp 
Within its valley-cradle, old Zermatt, 
Low-lying in a streamy gorge, receives 
The guest of Nature to her fastnesses. 
To its seclusion, deep as if wide seas 
Spread silver silence round its solitude, 
Devoutly gather, as to holy shrines, 
Far-traveled pilgrims leaning on their staves, 

And gladdened with the grandeurs of the way. 
l 



2 MONTE ROSA. 

Like statues of pale marble, Titan-tall, 

And calm in Titan strength, the snowy peaks 

O'ergaze the lowlier vales. Their lifted brows 

Confront the arch of heaven on equal terms ; 

Their grisly flanks record the flight of years 

Whose score is hid in dim eternities ; 

Their hoary heads, wrapped in white silence, 

seem 
As lost in deep and sombre reverie 
Upon the painful changes whose rude hands 
Have checked their fiery and unf earing youth, 
And trimmed them to this bleared antiquity. 
Old gray-beards ! Do they still recall, per- 
chance, 
The revelries of earlier days of yore, 
When the tough-layered planet rent its folds, 
And burnt its rocky bands like tow in twain, 
Rocked all its coasts with earthquake, roared 

with storm, 
And with volcanic torches ringed its skies, 



ZERMATT. 3 

While all the elements joined gleeful war, 
Their moods being wilder and their forces 

young ? 
Time-born, time-worn, and yet outwearing time, 
Are these dumb heralds in their age content 
To stand mere vouchers of those stirring times ? 
And help the younger thoughts of men to glance 
Through chemic mysteries of cosmic change, 
Through strange repulsions and attractions 

strange 
At play within the bubble of the globe, 
Till riotous earth, distrained of youthful heats, 
Convulsively drew close her shivering frame, 
And shriveled like a beldame cowered about 
The waning heap of unreplenished fires ? 
What lines of wretchedness then scarred her face ! 
What furrows drew the ever-cruel hours ! 
How wrinkled like an ocean, high and wide, 
Rose the rough ridges of deforming rock 
In measureless confusion sprawled abroad ! 



4 MONTE ROSA. 

\ 
And still the unrelenting years ran on, 

True wandering Jews, whose restless journeying 

Left fossil footprints on each splintered ridge, 

And softly hewed the cliffs, till here were cloven 

The sundered peaks, divided widely separate 

By yawning gorges, whence the sculptured 

crests 
Stood glorious o'er their valleys like young gods 
Fresh-fallen from high Olympus ; such great 

Jove 
Might set to sentinel his chosen land. 

But who the sculptors whose all-potent hands 
Had chiseled out this giant statuary ? 
What Titan, demon, demigod in rage, 
Brawny artificer, loosed his huge strength 
Upon these ridges, and for wrath drove through 
The iron barriers of these rended crags ? 
How shattered he the rock, and with what 
shards 



ZERMATT. 5 

Laid on such crashing blows, and clove the 

stone 
To such immensity, and left it torn 
In such a crazy chaos, world gone mad, 
The harsh memorial of his tempest wrath ? 
And then what artist, crammed with lawless 

thoughts, 
Came in to carve the shapely peaks supreme, 
And fashion out their graceful savagery ? 

Who? Who indeed? Nor Titan, demon, god, 
Wrought here ; no angry Vulcan from his forge, 
No hundred-armed Briareus wroth with Jove, 
No sullen dwarf from fire-fed Jotunheim, 
No thought-distilling brain, nor maddened will, 
Unleashed their forces on these shattered cliffs. 
No ! nor no tempered steel rang on their sides, 
No enginery thrust home a rattling tool, 
Nor hand or hammer split their welded sands, 
Nor artist chiseled out the towering crests. 



6 MONTE ROSA. 

But architect and craftsman both was he 
That all things terrene rules, the immortal sun 
That like high God toils ever weariless, 
Not taking Sabbath, not desiring rest, 
Nor sparing time, but squandering like a prince 
The golden minutes of his myriad years. 
He having moulded earth a little star 
From fiery mist and immemorial time, 
And bent her planetary circle true, 
Called out his servants to complete her orb. 
The cloud he beckoned forth from hollow sea 
And charged with shower ; the winds so lordly 

free 
He bid to ride as lackeys at his wheel ; 
The ice was his forbearance, and hale heats 
His unreined strength ; while frenzied light- 
nings struck 
With borrowed hammer of his radiance forged ; 
For Lord of lords is he, and his the elements 
To fetch and carry as his utter slaves. 



ZERMATT. 7 

So here he put these untaught serfs to task 
Like strolling journeyman chance - found and 

hired, 
Or clumsy laborers working by the day ; 
A paltry mob of idlers, vagabonds, 
Rash and uncouth mechanics, frivolous, 
Guiltless of plan, whose sloven art made light 
Of line and square and compass' puny rule, 
Who laughed at pains and scorned the score 

of hours. 
The fickle shower flew headlong at the ridge, 
Pelting all ways ; the plumy snow-flakes brushed 
Their innocent weakness on its stony face ; 
Weak streamlets wandered feebly down the 

rock 
In baby furrows, careless of their way ; 
And aimlessly the strong winds whirled about ; 
The crafty frost drove his thin wedges home 
In scar and seam ; the lightning's random sledge 
Smote blows of Thor on every eminence ; 



8 



MONTE ROSA. 



The ponderous glaciers pushed their awkward 

planes 
Wherever plane would run ; and daily fell 
The dash — the soft, innumerable dash — 
Of the sun-waves' foamless surf, in which the 

stone 
As gently broke as break the close- sealed buds 
Of dauntless violets, when young March 
Hunts pallid winter from the greening fields. 
These vagrant workmen, with light touch and 

strong. 
Drove at the fire-tried rock as if for sport, 
Nor cared a whit when grandeurs unforeseen 
Began to grow beneath their frolic hands ; 
But wantonly they dashed about the crests, 
Flew down each gorge, swept every ledge, and 

plaj^ed 
Along the dreadful precipice familiarly, — 
Children of cloud and air that took no 

thought, 



ZERMATT. 9 

Yet in good time fulfilled their due, and set 
Their antique nobleness upon the peaks, 
And flung the snows about them for a robe, 
And mailed their cones in ice impregnable, 
And showed their whiteness 'gainst the vaulted 

blue 
For one brief hour of geologic time ; 
Dumb witnesses to our disdainful day 
Of what was doing on earth ere man had come 
To see. 

And that unlettered time slipped on, 
Saw tropic climes invade the polar rings, 
Then polar cold lay waste the tropic marge ; 
Saw monster beasts emerge in ooze and air, 
And run their race and stow their bones in clay ; 
Saw the bright gold bedew the elder rocks, 
And all the gems grow crystal in their caves ; 
Saw plant wax quick, and stir to moving worm, 
And worm move upward reaching towards the 

brute ; 



10 MONTE ROSA. 

Saw brute by habit fit himself with brain 
And startle earth with wondrous progeny ; 
Saw all of these and still saw no true man. 
For man was not, or still so rawly was, 
That as a little child his thoughts were weak, 
Weak and forgetful and of nothing worth, 
And Nature stormed along her changeful ways 
Unheeded, undescribed, the while man slept 
Infolded in his germ, or with fierce brutes, 
Himself but brutal, waged a pigmy war, 
Unclad as they, and with them housed in caves, 
Nor knew that sea retired or mountain rose. 

So later men but found the peaks in place, 
Nor dreamed of their strange making, how it 

fared, 
But saw two ranges ranked in parallel, 
Two rival chains unearthly high, between 
Whose white battalions wound the gorge, 
The streamy, deep-drawn gorge where river 

Wisp 



ZERMATT. 11 

Blows his complaining trumpet loud and shrill. 
There delves a scanty tribe of pious Swiss, 
A care-bewildered folk in petty fields, 
And oft think ill of hills their frequent bane. 
These peaks men found, and lent them freak- 
ish names, 
Names since become thrice dear to mountain- 
eers, 
Who, having challenged death on their cold 

flanks, 
And given him odds for love of the blind play, 
Came back in triumph as from battles won. 
Each name a cloudy giant christens, one 
Whose Atlantean port in other land 
Would gather legend and sweet praise of song ; 
Names thick with consonants uncouth of sound, 
That make scant music in the beat of verse; 
Stockhorn, Broad Rympfishhorn, and Strahlhorn 

tall, 
And Allah-lin yclept of Saracens 



12 MONTE ROSA. 

In their brave days when great through Allah's 

name 
They harried beaten Christians o'er these 

heights ; 
Succeeds the bucklered crown of Alphubel, 
Held sternly 'gainst unweariable storms ; 
Then four slant towers of shaggy Mischabel, 
Highest mid high ; with many lesser spires ; 
Like Nubian slaves in burnous glistening white, 
Their cliffs rise blackly, folded oft in snows 
To shine untrammeled in the upper light, 
Each free and proud as were all heaven his own ; 
Like Nubian slaves their feet below are fast 
Chained to those mighty buttresses of crag, 
That with obtruding bareness crowd the leas. 

Confronting these across that rock-bound gorge 
Cut by the mad- waved Wisp long ages through, 
The rival range exalts superior peaks ; 
For on a rugged shoulder of old rock, 



ZERMATT. 13 

Whose unhealed scars betray time's awful strife, 
Vast Weisshorn's slaty pyramid — so yast 
That were all Egypt's build from its large flank 
Out-quarried, 't would no diminution show — 
In stony strength uprears its triple walls 
Above all rivals, and with gleaming load 
Of pendant glaciers decks the front of heaven. 
How long all isolate, mocking each approach, 
It held bleak spaces of thin air alone ! 
Till restless Tyndall of its grandeurs fain 
Challenged its cloudy terrors, boldly braved 
The rain of stones that rattle down its cliffs, 
The demon winds that wrestle o'er its wedge, 
The treacherous cornices of snow, storm-curled 
O'er gulfs abysmal that befringe its crags, — 
Braved all, and all out-braving all o'ercame ; 
Then light of foot deflowered the virgin snow, 
That slenderly leaps into kindred cloud 
From the slim tip, its last of mortal earth. 
Next this, the Rothhorn lifts his beamy spear 



14 MONTE ROSA. ' 

As burnished steel upon the vassal clouds ; 
And, smooth as ivory with cool sunshine swept, 
Dent Blanche's radiant cone, a trophy-tusk 
Of some huge saurian, out-torn one day 
By some primeval Anak rude in play ; 
Then Schallhorn's slighter grace, with Gabelhorn, 
And Dent d'Herens, beset with shrouded spurs 
'Neath ever-melting, never-melted snows. 

Then swimming on the vision, bold and large 
The monolith of hermit Matterhorn, 
Lean anchorite of mountains, nakedly 
Exposed to all the spite of wrathful heavens, 
A gaunt Stylites on his pillar gray, 
That in scarped precipices rises sheer 
Midst wide unfriendly glaciers desolate; 
An obelisk rough-hewn, grave Nature's sport, 
Such as some wrathful genius of the Gnomes, 
Some swift impatient Angelo of Elves, 
Plying his furious hammer on the stone, 



ZERMATT. 15 

Might thus have battered lamely out, and left 
Like Medieean tombs, half-finished, twice sub- 
lime. 
How glooms the austere bareness of its pile ! 
How darkly palled in tragic memories ! 
Since Whymper with glad comrades clambering 

down 
That baffling steep, so long the frank despair 
Of Alpine cragsmen, high with triumph flushed 
At his new victory o'er the desperate crag, 
Speechless with horror saw his laughing friends 
(Rope-bound as one for happier destiny) 
Slip backward in their tracks, and in a flash 
Shoot wildly down the headlong-bending cliff 
Like boulders crashing towards the Schwarze 

sea ; 
Wide spread their fluttering hands across the 

ledge 
In frantic clutches vainly wandering, 
Till o'er the neighboring and deathful brink 



16 MONTE ROSA. 

Of utter precipice they drop like lead 
A thousand quivering fathoms down, the while 
The hoarse air murmurs in their dying ears, 
And so make end, — a grievous end untimely. 
Young, bold, and strong, but in their strength 

surprised, 
They knew no more of youth or pleasing time. 

Yet blame no blame for daring rash to death ! 
-For while brave men have sons will deeds be 

done 
That show the perilous mettle of bold sires ; 
And still the fearless is the nobler race, 
Apter for life, and fitter for rude truth, 
Prolific of such men as seek the pole, 
Or brave the savage in hot Afric's glades, 
Give law at home, or colonize new lands, 
And carry Europe to the farthest Isles. 
Of such a blood the youth will pluck the beard 
Of wolfish death within his dabbled lair, 



ZERMATT. 17 

To get their way, laughing his threats to scorn ; 
And some he quickly slays, who else had died 
Obscure in later painful beds at home ; 
But men are born enough to spare a waste 
In heroes, whose far-shining names undimmed 
Bound on the withering forehead of the time 
Shall give it lustre to the latest age. 

But last we hail the central Alpine group 
That stands far-gazing on the battlements 
Of that portentous wall, that, like a bruised 
And wounded serpent, trails its tortuous length 
From sovran Blanc to sombre Engadine, — 
There stands and claims an old preeminence. 
Its peerless giants towering o'er the clouds 
Like armored soldiery in glittering rank, 
Circle the Wispach valley round, and close 
Its bastioned gorge with lines impregnable ; 
Then, throwing out a friendly hand snow-gloved, 
To either side bind fast the double chain 



18 MONTE ROSA. 

Fore-named, in one colossal horseshoe curve 
Bent round through miles of melancholy crag. 

Here mass their force the Alpine monarchs, 
Kingly all, and like great kings companionless. 
Breithorn the first, his bold, unshrinking brow 
Thatched thick with snows that whitely over- 
hang 
The swarthy face of his scarred precipices ; 
Castor and Pollux next, twin births of Time, 
Old ere their Grecian counterparts were young, 
Pure as the chosen Knights of Holy Grail, 
In harness of the diamond-studded sleet ; 
Then mightier Lyskamm, Coryphaeus huge, 
Whose elephantine shoulders lightly bear 
The cloud-gleaned harvest of a century's snows ; 
And last the Monte Rosa, whose tall spires 
The sun first gilds when golden morning dawns, 
And far Orion, through slow-rolling nights, 
Descries as nearest to his seven-fold stars. 



II. 

THE MOUNTAIN. 

Monte ROSA, queen of that large court of 

kings, — 
Reigning but ruling not, since each is sole, — 
In all-surpassing splendor keeps high state 
Unceasingly ; about her pillared throat 
She twines a mantle of caressing snow, 
Wind-blown to ripples, like a shallow brook 
That fleets along the pebbles, dimpling on, — 
A cloth-of-silver robe that spotlessly 
Along her ample shoulders drifts, and falls 
In mazy folds and furrows infinite ; 
Now clinging close and showing vaguely clear 
The massive undulations of her form, 
As 'neath its marble dress a statue's limbs ; 
Now wandering freely off in careless wreaths, 



20 MONTE ROSA. 

Like those that round the wintry fences curl 
In lines of shelter from the driving winds ; 
Then drifting on, her snows become a flood 
Of draperies voluminous, a whirl 
Of banks and hollows, copes of ruffled sleet 
In unrestrained disorder trailing down, 
And tossed in sparkling sheets of frozen foam 
Tempestuously about her feet ; so drape 
Her mountain ruggedness, and kindly veil 
The ravages of nothing-sparing time 
Beneath a starry sheen of woven dews. 

From Switzerland the mount escapes the vale 
In gentle slopes, no rare height promising, — 
Like rustic lad that setting out from home 
His coming exaltation not forecasts, — 
But soon puts on a more aspiring strain, 
And swells in swift-succeeding waves its sharp 

ascent 
Of stony ridges ; like a tumbling surge 



THE MOUNTAIN. 21 

When freshening breezes heap it wave on wave, 
Arch springs from arch in boldly growing curve ; 
But presently subdues its hurried rise 
As breathless with the pace, and stays awhile 
Where streams of confluent glacier ease the 

grade ; 
But next, abruptly from the glacial plain, 
Like some Cologne cathedral's cliff of gray 
O'er the mean huts of petty villagers, 
Upsprings its central mass, in wrinkled walls 
Of many-weathered crag, oft broken through 
And parted into various precipices 
By the long glaciers grinding hardly down ; 
Here tower the cliffs in Gothic savagery 
To heights announcing all their boundless pride 
And scornful purpose, bearing in strong arms 
A large plateau, where trackless snow-fields wide 
Lie tranquilly outspread, and bright with sun, 
Peaceful as meads Elysian seen in sleep ; 
And long, deep-drifted swales whose restless 

curves 



22 MONTE ROSA. 

Capricious bend in tempest-moulded lines; 
And treeless glens, smooth-floored with sifted 

snows, 
Couched tenderly beneath the shaggy brows 
Of darkling crags, dells for trim fairies' meet, 
When 'neath pleased moons Titania calls the 

rout, 
Sure no intrusive foot will mar the tryst ; 
Succeed new cliffs again, whose rigid lines, 
As sternly tense as fierce Ambition's face 
Set to harsh ends, break grimly through the 

crust, 
And like tall pines that to the sun stretch up 
Their arid tops from dank sun-starved ravines, 
Strain on, as if the pitch already gained, 
The giddy elevation, still were naught, 
And still to rise were easy, since no thought 
Of halt, no weary need of stay intrudes, 
And even gravitation, long out-breath'd 
Seems left for dead below; all sublimed 






THE MOUNTAIN. 23 

In one vast lift, and mighty bulk, and heap 
Of rock and earth snow-vested all its change- 
less year. 
Then finally two slender tapering spires 
In dainty grace salute the sky, and crave 
His company. 

So gradually gains 
The aspiring mount its vantage o'er the Swiss ; 
But bluffs the swart Italians roughly off 
With an abrupt, stupendous precipice, 
As if some planet-carving demiurge, 
With one strong sweep of his resistless sword, 
Had shorn the rock-ribbed framework of the 

globe 
Clean through to centre, that the half-world fell 
To lowest abyss ; the other raised its front 
A massive bastion, rampart measureless, 
A tyrant and colossal barrier, 
Fit parting of dissevered hemispheres. 
Harshly it breaks across the gracious vales, 



24 MONTE ROSA. 

And prisons them darkly in, checks man and 

beast, 
And halts the light- winged birds in vagrant 

sight, 

Save the rare eagle on his level vans ; 
A wall so sheer no snow doth cleave to it, 
No cleft-sown cedar mask its nakedness, 
No hardy birch get root-hold in its seams; 
Barely the many-fingered mosses cling, 
Brown lichens curl, and fearless saxifrage 
Shakes out its milky bells against the crag, 
Where dainty-footed chamois lightly flash, 
A living lightning, 'cross its unmoved face ; 
So deep its plunge, that half a measured league 
Of reeling air not brushes to its base, 
Where spire-tall pines as grasses seem to wave ; 
And from its dizzy brink, the traveler, 
Swooning with fear, plucks back his hasty foot, 
As if a mottled snake had stung it suddenly, 
Or skulking death, in ambush 'neath the brim, 



THE MOUNTAIN. 25 

Caught at him sharply, calling loud his name. 
In savage grandeur breaks the huge rock down 
Abrupt, unbuttressed, undivided, black, 
From the cold snow-line to warm haunts of 

men, 
Then folds its feet about with velvet meads, 
Where thick grass springs, and vineyards yield 

their grapes, 
Brown hamlets nestle, tinkling goat-bells ring, 
And soft-aired, verdurous valleys bend away 
Toward orange groves, and where gray olives bud. 

But far aloft the silent silvery peaks, 
Swept round by tangled. glaciers as an ocean isle 
By swirling currents, o'er-survey the world 
'Mid lifeless solitudes ; nor know life's stir, 
Save the lost chamois whistling for his herd, 
Or when the starling in his noisy hosts 
Makes migratory turmoil o'er the snow, 
Or clanging storks from Scandinavian homes, 



26 MONTE ROSA. 

In flight for lands of mosque and groves of palm, 
Rustle the silence with their rapid wings. 
All else repeats the lonelier age, ere life 
Was born; the thoughtless wind makes harp 

jEolian 
Of the serrate crag, the avalanche falls, 
The rock decays, and tumbles roaring down ; 
But voiceless are the wastes, where no man 

dwells, 
Where bat nor bittern haunts, nor lone wild 

beast, 
Whose dells are vacant of the cricket's song, 
The cry of owl, or plaintive whippoorwill, 
The sea-susurrus of the soughing pines, 
And everywhere is deadness undisturbed. 

For ages thus, dim with aerial mists, 
Untouched of any soil of common earth, 
Her radiant highness on a rock-hewn chair 
Sits throned in guise imperial : her seat 



THE MOUNTAIN. 27 

Of no wrought porphyry's empurpled pride, 
Nor polished marble rough with artist's thoughts. 
But crumpled schists of gneiss, and protogine, 
With mica's shining weakness flaked and seamed ; 
Nature's most coarse originals, untouched 
Of nice refinements, ragged, rent, and stained, 
And scribbled thickly o'er with mystic runes 
That tell how from red fire they came, and how 
Transformed afresh from sea, and how were 

raised, 
Upon the swelling back of vapors strong, 
How fixed in place, and shaped ; legend most 

strange ! 
Which they who ran have read, scrawled large 
In that barbaric tongue, wherewith — his 

mark — 
The sloven time signs all his manual works. 

Beneath, the ponderous mountain-pillar sinks 
Its shaft, and adamantine strength far down 



28 MONTE ROSA. 

From glimpses of the ever-prying sun, 
Night-piercing moon, or eye of watchful star, 
Beyond discovered reaches of the mine, 
Beyond the lowest gorge of ocean's floor, 
To Pluto's murky realm and cave unvisited, 
Where prisoned earthquakes shake their hid- 
eous bars, 
And young volcanoes bubble gruesomely ; 
There rests the mount, its vast foundations 

braced 
On that colossal arch whose sweeping span 
O'ervaults the muttering lakes of central fire, 
The flux and fume of windless inner se&s 
And molten bays still vexed incessantly. 

Italian skies of deep untroubled blue 
Thrice-dyed bind close their sapphire coronet 
To Monte Rosa's alabaster brow. 
The climates, all astray from guardian months, 
Race up and down her sides capriciously, 



TEE MOUNTAIN. 29 

Like truant children whiling out the time. 
The gypsy clouds a-loitering mid the hills, 
Strolling adventurers from the teeming sea, 
Rehearse their shows before her, and discourse 
Their evanescent pomp to her eternity ; 
Now pitch their roving tents on her large slopes, 
Now trail their arrowy streamers from her tip, — 
Pennons of coasting tempests still mast-down 
The low horizon ; now furl gray storm-caps 
Round her pallid brow ; or lifting, climb the cope 
Of careless heaven to mock her envious heights 
With higher cliffs of fog ; then drooping low 
In long pavilions stretch their lazy folds, 
Soft canopies, above her lily head, 
'Neath which she seems to lie reclined at ease, 
Some stately daughter to a sceptred king, 
Head leaned on hand in summer indolence, 
And large fair limbs outstretched at length, 

half -draped 
And half-displayed, while lights and shadows 

changefully, 



30 MONTE ROSA. 

Like furtive smiles from sleepy eyelids shed, 
Play o'er her fields of snow ; and reveries faint 
Steal through her thoughtful heart in silentness ; 
Heedless as love of time, and what time brings, 
And pure as Dian walking heaven alone. 

Thicken the clouds, she hails the gathering fray, 
And yields her queenliness. to hordes of storm ; 
With sweet, cool breath conjures the vaporous 

throng, 
Like wily Circe in her subtlety, 
And of their pilfered spoil from every sea 
She robs them cunningly, while they beguiled 
Lie softly on her bosom ; nor resents 
Rude rain, nor hail, nor blasts of bullying winds, 
That howl their bluster in her ice-hung caves, 
Nor blow from lightning's arm, whose brand of 

flame 
Smites on her streaming forehead brutally, 
Cleaving her well-forged crags as woodman 

cleaves 



THE MOUNTAIN. 31 

A log with his keen axe ; throws trembling back 
The bellowing thunder's harmless noise renewed 
In deep reverberations from her walls ; 
Lets slip the flying avalanche from its high- 
perch 
Upon the rocks to stoop a feathery cloud 
Of white-winged mischief on the smothered 

meads ; 
Or flings the fragments of her rended cliffs 
With booming uproars to the lowest dell. 
Herself as wild as any tempest born 
Of the conceiving heaven's immingled airs, 
Joins in the loud illimitable tumult 
As one with elemental nature's self, 
Not unscathed, but of the scath unreckful ; 
And while the scowling rabble of low cloud 
Spits out its snow-flakes to confederate winds, 
Plucks in the fleecy waste to every cleft, 
And craftily with shuttles of the blast 
Weaves a new surface to her seamless robe, 



32 MONTE ROSA. 

Wherein, the storm withdrawn, she meets the 

day, 
Serene as Juno on Olympus throned, 
And sparkling more than night's unnumbered 

stars. 

So Monte Rosa stands in empery, 
And so has stood more slowly-pacing years 
Than there are needles on the branching pine, 
Holding a winter in perpetual fee ; 
With naught of change save waste, and weather- 
ing ; 
Cloud, calm, and sun her sole vicissitudes. 
Nor ever could the tardy spring here find 
A fruit-tree grown to hang her blossoms on, 
Nor summer leaves to shade her burning eyes, 
Nor could boy autumn shake a browning nut 
From any copse within her terraces. 
Sparse arctic plants, children of ancient cold, 
About her glaciers' lip hang small and weak, 



THE MOUNTAIN. 33 

Left orphans here, belated in the flight 
Their comrades made, upon the ragged skirts 
Of the decaying ice-cape once thick-wrapt 
About the shivering shoulders of the North, 
But on her bossy uplands plays no child, 
Nor human generations dare advance 
Their monuments amid her dateless pinnacles. 
Coldly she keeps her virgin court, nor heeds 
Of all revolving earth's far-ranging course, 
And punctual circuit through sun-governed skies, 



III. 

THE GLACIER. 

The miser Winter banks unbounded hoards 
Of silvery snows locked fast in wards of frost 
On Monte Rosa's stronghold ; there, with clutch 
Of unrelaxing fingers stiff for cold, 
Holds them well-guarded lest the spendthrift 

hours 
Of lavish Summer filch the treasured store. 
Deeply he dreads the prowling fohn-wind's 

breath, 
Deeply, the sun's sly ray unscrupulous, 
And stealthy depredations of gray rains. 
But misers' hoards oft fall to gentle heirs, 
And flow to human uses ; so these snows, 
So keenly guarded, o'er-amassed in time 






THE GLACIER. 35 

By often robberies of the traveler-clouds, 
And heaped to surfeit crowd their rocky bounds, 
Then squeezing through the niggard's full- 
crammed fist, 
Steal off unhindered down a choked ravine 
Dug through the mountain's midmost scaurs, 

wherein 
To crystal ice transformed by magic wand 
Of laughing fairies in the sunbeams hid, 
They join the laggard glacier's secular march, 
Which, like calm planets, knows nor haste nor 
rest. 

This glacier stream, compact of welded snows, 

A flowing solid of translucent ice, 

Brims to its verge a flinty gorge ; there lies 

In silence sunning its unwieldy bulk, 

A strange frost-dragon in steel-gleaming scales 

Coiled close the crags between in many a fold, 

And sinuous curve, and glancing, fretful ring, 



36 MONTE ROSA. 

Like Norseman's Fafnir, serpent shrewd and 

foul 
That gloats above the Niblung's ruddy gold. 
A monster vast and vague, whose horrent spines, 
The nodding seracs on his bended neck, 
Tall-bristling as a feudal city's towers, 
Give show of kindling anger ; whose blue 

mouths, 
A thousand grim crevasses, spread their jaws 
Like ghastly graves in wait for living men. 
In his rock-riven lair he lies supine, 
Groaning by turns, as gorged with heavy food ; 
And seeming motionless secretes his dull intent, 
But inches on unnoticed, vale-ward bound, 
Tricked thither falsely by the sun's bright lure. 

A Protean changeling, much he masquerades, 
Eluding quest along his devious way: 
First spreads abroad a thresher's level floor, 
Then in long rigid swells gray ocean mocks, 






THE GLACIER. 37 

And further winds his train in strenuous curves, 
A winter highway deeply groined by wheels, 
About some cape of crag, or headland bold 
Thrust sharply on its path; then staggering 

down 
A short declivity, one ruffled coil 
Disparts its glittering scales, that flinging back 
The sun betrays the reptile on his way ; 
But next he crushes through a steep defile, 
Where with convulsive struggles cleaves his 

back 
In gulfy chasms, abysses bottomless, 
Ragged and tossed, as had an earthquake turned 
In restless sleep beneath his brittleness : 
Here, toppling icebergs lift their glassy cliffs; 
There, well-squared blocks huge as the slave-cut 

stones 
Of building Pharaohs, or tumbled wreck 
Of walls Cyclopean, old Mycenae's pride ; 
One bright confusion, turgid anarchy ; 



38 MONTE ROSA. 

While still as sleeping crocodile by reedy Nile, 
That basking in the sunshine sleepeth long, 
The sluggard keeps his journeying unbetrayed. 

But reaching suddenly the frightful brink 
Of a sheer precipice, the glacier halts 
As stiff with horror, all its steely spines 
Erect in regiments of glancing pikes and spears 
And bayonets of broken soldiery, 
Dismayed by rumors of an unseen foe, 
And fixed in wild disorder as they stand. 

But when the moonlight sheds elusive gleam 
Upon these frigid fantasies, the wan-faced 

throngs 
Stand ghastly horrible, a maniac rout 
Of graveyard ghosts by one mad impulse seized, 
An eerie throng of goblins, phantoms, weirds, 
All leaning guilty forward bent for home, 
But caught untimely in their panic-flight 



THE GLACIER. 89 

By toll of matin bells, and cock's shrill crow 
In the cool break of dawn, and petrified 
Upon their ghostly track ; silent as tombs, 
Save when some glimmering tower, driven se- 
cretly 
Beyond his poise, goes crashing down the steep, 
A world of icy ruin as it flies, 
And clangs the plausive echoes with its din. 

But still thrust on by ever-crowding snows, 
Held in cold durance on the mountain's top, 
The unwilling Python leaps the bitter verge, 
And falls a weltering ruin in the abyss ; 
There shattered into fragments trails along, 
A cataract of riven torsos, limbs, 
And mangled men in marble, as had here 
Great Athens dashed her sculptured failures 

down 
From this unfaned Acropolis ; or say, 
A lava-flow of lucent mother-o'-pearl 



40 MONTE ROSA. 

In lava-torture writhing as it runs ; 
A soundless cascade, death-struck Niagara, 
Or else Niagara's rapid ere the fall* 
Seized in grand rush of all its racing floods, 
Its waterspouts, its flinging jets of foam, 
Struck in mid-volley by the trancing breath 
Of zero cold ; that fierce flow frozen, all swirls 
Congealed, each furrowed rill, each glassy drop, 
And every rainbow bubble caught surprised 
At top of speed, and crystaled as it flew ; 
While here and there a leaning Pisa-tower, 
Mid-rapid left, stands strangely eminent 
Amid its shattered compeers, rooted fast 
Within its treacherous base. 

Thus wounded, torn 
At surface ; but deep down the wily worm 
Has kept his swollen body whole and sound ; 
All fresh and unconcerned and fearlessly 
He holds his headstrong course to that low vale 
For which he started half an age ago. 



THE GLACIER. 41 

The ice-fall past, the glacier gathers in 
His shivered members, smooths his furrowed face, 
And spreads again in fair expanse of field, 
A fruitless glebe no plowshare ever rends, 
No sower sows with seed, though lying plane, 
And well-bestead with limpid boiling springs, 
With here and there a lakelet blue, and large 
As a circus ring, whose depths untenanted 
See never minnow herding in its pools, 
Nor swift-finned pike dart on the silly dace, 
Nor painted trout surprise the gilded fly, 
But peacefully the prisoned waters smile 
Within their sea-green bowls of carven ice, 
Fit goblets for great Thor and Odin great 
When wandering from dim Asgard in the North 
They raised the hunt amid archaic hills ; 
Pellucid meres, whose baby wavelets low 
Break softly on the sharp, unpebbled marge, 
Where greens no sedge, nor music-making rush, 
No cress, nor water-loving flag, nor mint, 
Nor odorous lily brave in white and gold. 



42 MONTE ROSA. 

By night the ice-sheet lies as dead with cold, 
But sunrise brings the pulse of life to it ; 
For rustling through its pores like wind in corn, 
Millions of new-born rills begin to drip 
With myriad morning-murmur musical, 
And stir its pulses with first throbs of life. 
The drops to rills, the rills to rivulets fill, 
And these to brooks, that wax to dashing 

streams ; 
The streams uniting into torrents swell, 
That smoke along their course with rocket-speed, 
Grooving deep sluice-ways in the dripping ice 
Veined like an agate, and of such bright gleam 
As shines from polished marble touched with sun 
Upon its watery brilliance, seen thus fair 
At new St. Paul's outside the Roman walla. 
Here, coffined all alive, the bubbling floods, 
Swifter than storm-blown birds that fleetly skim 
To leeward down a gale, slip down their runs, 
Clashing their cymbals in melodious haste, 



THE GLACIER. 43 

And pause no instant in the breathless course, 
Until they reach the Moulin's gloomy pit, — 
A witch's well of blackest mystery 
Bored through the glacier's breast to soundless 

depths, 
And weirdly hung with looped and torn ice- 
fringe, 
And ragged icicles about its lip ; 
Here gleefully bounds in the ramping flood 
'Mid shrilling echoes from the straitened walls, 
Breathing its watery smoke to heaven, then hides 
In hollow caves by cold enchantments bound, 
Nor sparkles into sunshine thence for many 
days. 

Far down the gorge the glacier welters on, 
Out-breathing death wherever points its tongue, 
While on it grows nor tree nor smallest shrub, 
Nor bird gives voice, nor ever any beast 
Goes down to graze there, nor doth insect glean 



44 MONTE ROSA. 

His morsel-meal from its dull barrenness ; 
But in its bosom lies the chamois dead, 
Entrapped, fond brute ! in some unblest cre- 
vasse, 
With travelers pale, and o'er-adventurous guides 
Snatched from the crest of life's most happy 

hour 
To this long sleep and hated sepulchre. 
And on its bosom tombs the errant bee, 
And silly butterfly encrystaled there, 
By sunshine traitored in a flowery quest, 
Where never flower blossomed, nor shall bloom ; 
And on its sluggish back it hales away 
Great loads of mountain spoil in smutty lines 
Of black moraine, the shapeless wreck and 

shred 
Of grand old crags, and beauteous peaks, whose 

strength 
It slowly ruins, — slave that slays its king. 
A belt of Arctic cold, it crowds between 



THE GLACIER. 45 

The fields where gracious summer glows, 

Pushing its devastations to the end ; 

Then, foully burrowing 'neath stone and earth, 

Is slain in secret by the assassin Sun, 

Whose treacherous lure hath brought it down 

so low; 
Yielding its life-blood in a moaning stream, 
The tawny Wisp whose torrent floods make 

haste 
To drown their clamor in the leaping Rhone. 
But, daily slain, the glacier daily fills 
The rock-sown glen with echoing currents loud, 
That fuller flow the more the dog-star burns, 
Gladdening the meadows of remotest men 
With benefactions sprung they know not whence, 
And haply care not in their indolence. 
So every snow-flake wrung from Winter's hand, 
And miser-grasp, finds its old home, — the sea, 
And frolics on the surge, whence in a cloud 
By false Ixion, that seducer Sun, 
'T was ravished willingly so long ago. 



46 



MONTE ROSA. 



Oh ! happy we, whose brief and page of life 
On kindlier reaches of remembered time 
Is written, when but degenerate broods 
Of pristine monster-glaciers gall the hills ; 
Nor know, as our unknown forefathers knew, 
His deadly greatness, when one ice-sheet 

wrapped 
His vast of body round each isolate peak, 
And trailed a mighty octopus his hundred arms 
And loathy tentacles of horrid death 
Across the fertile acreage, then gorged 
The valleys with his slimy hulk, and crawled 
Supinely o'er the hill-sides for his prey ; 
Winning the reindeer from cold Norway down, 
And woolly mammoth with their vanished mates, 
That craved perpetual winter for its cold. 
How groaned the land beneath his frigid bulk ! 
How fled skin-clad barbarians affright ! 
Their pastures buried, wattled huts o'erturned, 
And hunting grounds laid waste, nor dared 

return 



THE GLACIER. 47 

For drear immeasurable millenniums, 
Till wounded grievously the glacier lay, — 
Fafnir by solar Siegfried deeply cloven, — 
A dragon shriveled, spent, and shrunken back 
To his high mountain fastnesses, half-dead, 
Mere fossil of his prime, and mummied corse 
Of that prodigious spoiler whose foul length 
O'erlay this realm with universal blight, 
And hideous leagues of body unassoiled. 
But now in his abandoned ranges wide 
Men plant their vines, and drink the blood of 

grapes, 
Build sunny homes, and reap their grains in 

peace, 
So long as he returns to scathe no more. 



IV. 
ST. THEODULE. 

Beneath dark Breithorn's beetling brow, 'twixt 

that 
And rearing Matterhorn, St. Theodule 
Bends graciously its snow-white neck, as when 
The laggard ox stoops low his tranquil head 
To take the yoke ; so forms a crescent pass 
In that forbidding wall, which otherwise 
Imprisons Zermatt the streamy in its guard. 
Thence on clear days, when noon pours its steep 

light 
On the white wonder of the Rosa's snows, 
The mount displays its glories unsurpassed. 
Set like a castle mastered of great drifts, 
And buried half beneath them, — while its lords 



ST. THEODULE. 49 

Are gone, and gone its ladies all, it stands 

Corner to a supernal masonry, 

Whose uncoursed crag within its hollow ring 

Begirds the Gorner glacial circus round, 

Building a matchless amphitheatre — 

So large 't would dwarf Rome's Colosseum 

To a f easter's bowl, — with glacier paved, 

And terraced to the clouds with bank on bank 

Of trailing glaciers, crystal, undefiled. 

Here seems as if the word were given 

To deck a fitting court for that assize 

Delayed so long, when risen men should stand 

In their simplicity before the throne, 

The great white Throne which scarce shall shine 

more bright 
Than these broad snows beneath this midday sun. 

Here Breithorn, the surpliced Twins, and Lys- 

kamm 
With Monte Rosa ranged, — unbroken choir 



50 MONTE ROSA. 

Of voiceless singers, choral to the eye, 

One giant picture form, at one glance swept 

From crown to base, from base to dazzling 

crown, 
A silver splendor, seat of innocence. 
Each dark-faced precipice, each slender spire, 
And every craggy cape and shadowy bay, 
Are boldly marked amid wide, crusted snows, 
Whose lustre blinds a quadrant of the sky ; 
Their tireless roods of heaven-encroaching line 
Aspiring to the zenith threat the stoop, 
And quivering curve of azure firmament, 
That bends a lover's pace beyond their tips ; 
Their glory, vastness, strength in deep repose, 
Tower in such near horizon, so sublime 
That Nature stands astonished, blinded, dazed, 
Amid imperial glories still her own. 

Here one refulgent morning, after days 
Of storm, when hosts of thoughtless clouds had 
flung 




ST. THEODULE. 51 

Discarded snows on every bossy hill, 

Chanced a good bishop from a western see, 

A man athletic for his years and work, 

Who held great Nature dear, and not too much 

Accursed by her Creator's word of haste, 

When Adam " took and ate." Here, toiling on 

O'er the high level of St. Theodule, 

Whose unvexed slope as polished ivory shone, 

The dazzling spectacle immense and pure, 

Its all-unrivaled, immemorial grace 

Stirred his grave soul to ecstasy divine, 

That so he stood quite still, and called his guides, 

Those hardened veterans in such sceneries, 

To check their swinging steps, and bare their 

heads 
With him in holy reverence, while each, 
As each had learned at mother's knee, re-said 
In his own native speech the Lord's great prayer, 
Our Father, which in Heaven art (as chanced 
A psalm in triple tongue), to testify 



52 MONTE ROSA. 

Transcendent gratitude to God most high, 
For such amazing glory at its full. 

So stood he with the astounded hill-men there, 
Like some primeval Druid in his woods, 
Head bared, and lifted hands outspread toward 

heaven, 
His white hair floating on the idle breeze, 
Adoring ancient Nature — goddess dear, 
And mother of all worships 'neath the sun — 
With deep, ancestral reverence, ere he knew 
Her gracious cult behind its thin disguise: 
Stirring the wintry waste with such a voice 
Of transport as his high cathedral roof 
Had seldom echoed from its fretted vault. 



MILAN. 

A STRANGER once at Milan loitering 
Throughout a leaden day, fatigued at last 
With the rich city's treasures, — jewels, shrines, 
Ivories, and pictures, and the Iron Crown, — 
I turned my steps to the Duomo's fane, 
The hour before the dimmed Apollo drove 
His drowsy team below the western wave. 
Thence through the incense fumes, and past the 

priest 
Droning his dolorous chant, I mounted 
Up to the pinnacled and saint-thronged roof, 
And saw the vesper city dim beneath, 
And nothing more, and felt the world was small 

and mean. 



54 MONTE ROSA. 

But suddenly the clinging vapors, touched 
By chill of gaining night, swept back their folds, 
And opened all-glorious Nature to her depths. 
Like all the immortal gods, the white-cliffed Alps, 
A full Olympus of divinities, 
Towered high in sunny grandeur on the north, 
And Monte Rosa, like great Hera, first. 
Upon her swart and dreadful precipices 
A deeply-moving beauty delicately shed, 
And in her dusky vales a tender glow 
Of purpling atmospheres, that royally 
Bathed crag and buttress and each shaggy spur, 
And softened all rough outlines into grace ; 
But on her fulgent spires such light ineffable 
As makes men sigh to share her heavenly 

heights, 
Their fadeless pleasure, and unchanging calm. 
A lotus land of pensive afternoons, 
A garden of Hesperides, whose close 
The gold-haired daughters of the kingly sun 



MILAN. 55 

Kept carefully, where fear, nor night, nor death 
Could come, nor winter fall for all its snows ; 
But where the palm might lift its plumy fronds, 
The peacock burn, the slim gazelles find rest, 
And all rare things the gloaming hollows hold. 

Then sank the sun, and saffron grew to pink 
Upon the flushing snows, till spire and dome 
And every silver valley filled with fire ; 
And like a heavenly rose upon the sky 
The well-named Rosa blossomed full and large, 
And flung her blushes to the eastern clouds, 
And far across gray earth, and crowned the 

heavens 
With more than many roses' loveliness. 

Then gathering fire the rock itself did burn, 

A flameless pillar, red Arabian gold, 

Or ruddy coral from Pacific seas, 

Built to a dreamer's palace looming warm 



56 MONTE ROSA. 

In dreamer's whirl of lawless fantasy 

Against the darkening twilight* such no poet 

sang, 
Or e'er shall truly sing as it deserves. 

Then fading slow, as fled the truant sun, 

Failed to such flowery hues, and ravishing, 

As o'er shy spring's ambrosial orchards roll 

In fold on fold of odorous April bloom, 

Where white and pink contend for mastery, 

And now the pink is all, and now the white, 

But lovely, dainty, pure, and delicate 

Beyond compare ; as if the dewy eve 

Had touched the rude rock's flinty heart, and set 

Unwonted juices leaping in its veins 

And hardened pulses, till it smiled in flowers. 

But paler grew against the growing dusk, 
Till carven cloud it feigned, yet more than cloud, 
Of subtler line than cloud could ever draw ; 



MILAN. 57 

Rather say, a rigid wave of chiseled foam, 
A swollen tempest-surge, with dimples dark, 
Liquid jets, and melting bulbs translucent 
Turned to stone, and fixed in air so loftily, 
It seemed the roof and parting of the world. 
With sight of its unfailing strength, men's 

hearts 
Wax strong, and in its restfulness find peace. 
And so it stood until the jealous Sun 
Drove off in anger, taking all his beams, 
And left the world to darkness unrelieved. 






But everywhere a subtle sorcery 

Prevails ; the mountain charm subdues all 

change 
Of changeful nature to itself unchanged. 
Splendor of sun, or pallor of chill moon, 
Dawn's tranquil gold, eve's afterglow of fire, 
Stillness like sleep, or roar of hindered storm, 
But magnify, not mar, her majesty ; 



58 MONTE ROSA.' 

While all the wearing years that waste the world, 
And human hearts as well, but little win 
From that high grace wherein it pleases God 
To keep his mountain standing for a time. 



BOOK SECOND. 

I. 

THE ASCENT. 

But not at Monte Rosa's foot appalled 
Need men sit cowed, while envious of her heights. 
A clever cragsman, sound of limb and bold, 
May stoutly dare the snow, the ice, the crag, 
And push his clamber till he stand supreme 
On the sharp tip, a blunted needle's point, 
And zone the world with solitary gaze. 

While earth yet sleeps within that shadow cool 
Of her own body, which men call The Night, 
Strides forth the alert and girded mountaineer, 
With clattering heels that worry all the house, 
Across the friendly threshold of the auberge 



60 MONTE ROSA. 

Crowning the Eiffel's brim high o'er Zermatt. 
With him go brave companions and bold guides, 
And toilsome porters carrying food and gear, 
Stalwart, stout-hearted Swiss, of that unflinch- 
ing race 
So true to duty though the worst impend, 
Who mostly die, slain by these ruffian crags, 
Yet none the more desert them, but defy. 
Keen Alpine axe in hand, and shoulder ringed 
With coil of trusty rope, whereon may hang 
All lives, ere day is done, the men fare forth 
Across the scanty sward, whose downward stoop 
Misgives the coming toil with short-lived ease ; 
See the large constellations burning bright, 
The Milky Way's high bridge and trembling 

mile, 
Between the antlered foreheads of the hills, 
That bar the dusk horizon solemnly 
Against the lonely magic of the night. 
How ghostly looms the all-dispeopled world ! 



THE ASCENT. 61 

How haunted its wide silence steeped in dark ! 
Sombre and dull, oppressed with lingering sleep, 
They stumble mid the pathless shingle, where 
The glow-worm lantern throws a sickly ray 
That darkens darkness with its wavering flame. 
Then soon they skirt columnar Riffelhorn, 
Whose guilty rock, like many a taller Alp, 
Has slain its man without remorseful sign ; 
Then leap upon the Gorner glacier's floor, 
Whose stationed flood, a solid Amazon, 
Lies naked to the stars in pulseless sleep, 
And plod along in angry wonderment 
That men should waste their drowsy, restful 

morns 
In such emprise to climb a foolish hill. 
But ere their lagging feet have paced its breadth, 
Behold ! the Bedouin Night strikes his brown 

tent, 
And swift of foot slinks subtly down the west 
Before a cool, thin light, that drives its has- 
tening wave 



62 MONTE ROSA. 

Beneath the stars, and quells their eager eyes. 
The sickle-moon flings forth one keener flash 
(As Dian angered at her near eclipse), 
Then fades to withered cloud, and less than 

cloud. 
Meanwhile the cheery Day begins to light 
Within the smoky caves of eastern mists 
His earlier fires ; feebly they glimmer first, 
A low white dawn with faintest breeze astir, — 
Then faintly reddening steal from fog to 

fog 
Uncertainly, as when betimes aroused 
A camping hunter lights a brush-heap stored 
In some rock-chimney, feebly curls the flame, 
Half lost in smoke along the cold, green wood, 
And scarce gives sign if it will win or no. 
But striking up the hill and cope of heaven, 
Auroral streamers dash the gauzy scud, 
That floats so high it seems beyond the air, 
With spray of saffron pale, that ripples wide 



THE ASCENT. 63 

Till all the dusky east is swept with wave 
Of daffodil transpierced with twinkling stars. 
Then heaps exultant Morn his gaining fires, 
And flings their glowing embers far abroad 
Upon the folded cloud-rack palled in gloom 
Upon the dense horizon, kindling it 
Like summer thatch with swift access of flame, 
And penciling its fretful caverns with hues 
That shame the gold and scarlet-painted woods, 
When autumn frost to , rainbow fires their 

green ; 
Then higher still piles Day his furnaces, 
Till with fierce lustres running swift as thought 
Through maddened crowds, he flies along the 

mists, 
And burns in tranquil conflagration pure, 
Intense, and vaster than wide prairies show, 
When red men light the grass ; but noise- 
lessly, 
As step of spring o'er beds of sweet arbutus, 



64 MONTR ROSA. 

Flames and glows through all the curtained 

vapors 
Hung arow 'bove unresponsive snow-fields 
Ghastly pale, till heaven is paved like gold 
With level leagues of incandescent cloud, 
That blazing fiercely still blaze unconsumed. 
Then last the Orient Sun, Day's joyful lord, 
His silver lances held on high before, 
Extends his sceptre to the stooping hills, 
Now bending lowly toward his changeless seat, 
As vassal earth on fervid axis whirls ; 
And loosing all his meteors into air, 
Than star-showers brighter when the night is 

full, 
Than snow-flakes thicker when the squall is 

fierce, 
Fulfills the immeasurable gulfs of space 
With glancing lights and flakes of living fire, 
As were no end to his still wasting store, 
And brings the dear familiar daylight back, 
And all things dear to happy men with it. 



THE ASCENT. 65 

Now speed the sunny meteors, flock on flock, 
Swifter than winter-shunning birds, and fly 
In arrowy lines to Monte Rosa's tip 
Of flushing stone, lighting in myriads. 
Legions more on soundless unreturning wing, 
Bear down to the grim brotherhood of peaks 
All sombre still with night's cold loneliness, 
And cheer their drearihead with day's new smile. 
Still following myriads, without a pause, 
Drop flitting, gay invaders down each cliff, 
Whose wrinkled eld they mask in veils of rose ; 
Brush the wan snow plains with an alien gold; 
Sweep quickly off the webs of silver rime, 
By frolic night-folk spun in highland dells 
For their light sports ; unseal frost-fettered rills, 
And pierce the heavy eyes of herdsmen lone, 
And maids undaunted on the upland meads, 
Where breezy summer long they tend their kine, 
For humble wealth, though lean return of curds ; 
Cloud-girt as Jove on Ida, dim to men 
5 



66 MONTE ROSA. 

As sailors ice-embargoed near the pole, 

And deaf to thund'rous tides of that great world 

Ringed broadly round their feet, whose loud 

events 
Break noiselessly 'neath those unheeding heights. 

But still unspent, the ever-squandering sun 
Scatters new lights that loiter not, but swarm 
In sparkling legions on the denser clouds, 
Still massed unstirred between the lower cliffs, 
In counterfeit of such an ice-jammed stream 
As chokes Norwegian fiords; when strangely rent 
The solid-seaming floe dissolves its bonds, 
And rolls its mocking icebergs lightly off 
In buoyant fleets of wind-tossed fugitives 
(The full-sailed argosies of airy bays), 
Up each warm slope and into cooler skies. 

But though morn calls, no living thing bestirs 
Amid the graceless crags, no sweet lark sings, 



THE ASCENT. 67 

No chippering swallow skims the frosty air, 
No marmot whimpers, bleats no tender kid, 
Nor hums a beetle from his hammock flower ; 
But silently the tawny sunshine gives, 
And silently the grisly rocks receive, 
The wondrous transformation of the dawn. 

And still the saffron meteors thicklier swarm 
Than sparks from blacksmith's anvil when he 

smites 
The glowing bar, and swarming burst above 
The snowy gates, and pour their multitudes 
Adown the shadowy valleys, till they rouse 
The darkest gorges with the glance of morn. 
Then all the dewy lowlands smoke and steam, 
Swift cascades glitter, cattle rise and feed, 
And sober- visaged Switzers, young and old, 
Drift out from chalets quaintly carved with 

flowers 
And pious legends, brown, deep-eaved, and low, 



68 MONTE ROSA. 

And firmly anchored 'neath stone-ladened roofs, 
To early toils of far-resplendent day. 

Meanwhile our cragsmen, now beyond the wave 
Of the great Gorner glacier, break the fast 
Of fasting guides on " auf der Platte's " rock, 
Which lies ice-girdled where begins the steep. 
Thence small as flies, and slow as horned snails, 
Cheered by the sun, their father in the flesh, 
They pant along the snow-crust, full of life, 
'Mid the pale death of Arctic sceneries, 
And landscapes bare as scientific faiths ; 
Such know the dreary souls in Labrador, 
And polar bears round Greenland's glaciered 

coast : 
For Nature greets men here with savageries, 
Offers no flowers, nor fruit, nor song of wak- 
ing birds, 
No mossy grove, nor hardship-scorning pine, 
Nor place for rest, nor safety by the way ; 



THE ASCENT. 69 

And though attired in white of virgin nun, 
With face of saintly beauty, yet malign 
Her heart, and, her kind motherhood renounced, 
She seems step-mother strange, austere, and 

cold, 
But for man's ruin ready every hour, 
And to his anxious life indifferent 
As belted Saturn in his blameless sphere. 

Now up steep bossy sides of crusted snow, 
Night-chilled to hardness, fit to bear their 

weight, 
Their creaking steps ascend without a pause, — 
A trifling climb, were this the way of all. 
Rope-bound in line, lest some snow-screened 

crevasse 
Trip some unguarded foot, they wind along 
Like doubling Reynard when the hounds give 

chase : 
Now lightly leap a maze of glacier chasms, 



70 MONTE ROSA. 

Now, faces downward, crawl o'er wider gulfs 
On thin snow bridges, frail as life in age, 
Frozen o'er the blue and bottomless crevasse, 
Where even the summer lying lies a-cold, 
And that sharp trapper Death keeps set his 

springs 
To catch the rash transgressor unaware. 
Now tangled in a net-work of wide pits 
They wander dubiously, no outlet found ; 
Or issuing thence dismayed behold their course 
Decoying where the unharnessed avalanche 
Runs down its trampling herds of startled snows, 
And breathless flit across it one by one, 
Afraid to speak, lest any sound stampede 
Its deadly multitudes ; then lies their path 
Where seracs huge, and nodding to their fall, 
Lean toppling o'er an ice-slide's polished face, 
To hurtle down anon in fragments fierce 
With lonely clangor ; or, on crossing this 
Like timid hares athwart the scent of hounds, 



THE ASCENT. 71 

And taking to the cliff, they escalade 
Its gnarled and guttered roughness, on its wall 
Bruising their tender flesh, on its immensity 
Embarked like nautilus with his frail sail 
On the large surge of ocean's liquid round ; 
Now creep they quivering up a narrow shelf, 
Where squirrel scarce could run his pretty track ; 
Now cling by thinnest crevices where fingers, 

toes, 
Pinched bloodless in the crannies, barely hold ; 
Then crowd up some close chimney in the cliff 
(No sooty sweep to narrower flues compelled), 
Where ice-paved walls, smooth and precipitous, 
Defy an essaying, save for notches cleft 
By lusty axe-cuts of untiring guides ; 
Glued to the palisade, with desperate clutch 
Of taloned rock-swallows hanging by their nests, 
They crush and squeeze along, or up or down 
Or anywhere, as chance allows, unsure 
Even so of outcome fortunate to toil. 



72 MONTE ROSA. 

Sometimes in deadliest peril they evade 
As by a miracle a rattling hail, 
And furious cannonade of bowlders huge, 
Shrill-humming stones, and tons of whizzing ice, 
Dread salvos of a foe's artillery, 
Discharged by skulking frost-imps overhead, 
Who, keeping sleepless sentry all the year, 
With these malignant volleys fend the ledge. 

And so our travelers moil, and trudge along, 
Panting for breath, with trembling knees, athirst 
And faint, hands bleeding from the sharp-edged 

rocks, 
And tired hearts knocking 'gainst their seated 

ribs; 
Till, one cliff conquered, on its saw-like ridge 
They sit secure, and gazing proudly down, — 
Like daring boys astride a roof-tree keen, 
And perilous to hold, or leave ; not long, 
For soon they find the sturdy ice-clad spikes 
Make cause of quarrel to their younger flesh ; 



THE ASCENT. 73 

Though fondly clasped with more than lover's 

warmth, 
They give them welcome cold as foeman's steel. 

But thus at last they overtake and win 

The " Saddle's " windy seat conspicuous, 

And camp them down for breathing-space and 

food, 
Indifferent lunch o'ertouched with wild surmise ; 
For glancing 'cross the abysmal glacier-bed 
Stretched far beneath them at a dizzy depth, 
They mark great Lyskamm's shelving precipice, 
That fronts them opposite, in black dismay, 
"A thrilling type of dangers all their own ; 
But vaunting still a prowess none the less 
Than doughtier cragsmen boast, who still have 

dared, 
And conquered Lyskamm in his awfulness, 
They draw not back, but brace their souls anew, 
As men whom threats refresh, and re-resolve 
To hale their quarry home, whate'er betide. 



74 MONTE ROSA. 

Useless the feat and dire the .useless toil, 
With trivial recompense for time waylaid ! 
And why should men but delicately bred, 
With soft white hands woo labors so austere, 
And peril thus their world for one grand hour 
Of martial conflict with intrepid Death ? 
Why ? But that we are children of rude sires, 
And with ancestral humors o'er-inf used ; 
In us old ardors burn, wild instincts thrill, 
Of our own will and motive innocent, 
Which dim forefathers from their graves be- 
queath. 
As they were hunters, herdsmen, warriors bold, 
We living in their flesh crave open fields, 
Bleak hills and streams, dark woods and aim- 
less toils. 
Their habits strong, the customs of wild years, 
Lurk deeply lodged in our less brutish strain, 
And wake to hunt us now afield, and now 
To sail far seas, or raise all-risking wars, 






THE ASCENT. 75 

And even to invent new dangers in our zest, 
That so our dainty nerves may leap and thrill 
With those fierce shivers of delight wherein 
Our unhoused sires did spend their stormy lives. 
Here in the wilderness we find old homes, 
Ancestral acres lapsed but for a time, 
Abandoned playmates now rejoined to claim 
Our forfeit part in them inherited 
From childhoods lost in dusky centuries 
Of mouldered sires re-born again in us. 
The mount, the moor, night, snow, and steep- 
built crag, 
With all that puts sweet life at threat'ning odds, 
Though yesterday acquaintances of ours, 
Come to us thus as oldest proven friends 
And dear antagonists invincible, 
From our unbreeched progenitors, who knew 
And brothered them all so long ago ; 
And dying left their turbulent comradeship, 
A true love-gift, a blood inheritance, 



76 MONTE ROSA. 

A legacy within our members hid 
Of rippling nerve that leaps when dangers press, 
A bandit craving for a bout with death, 
Ourselves the priceless stake, — 'gainst nothing ! 
And here on this bare crag we drink hilarity 
In deep ancestral cups, and wassail keep 
With fresh, bright air, that like a rustic wine 
Intoxicates ; with sunshine, boisterous wind, 
Large sky, free space, and blood that riotously 
Invades the swollen veins ; the sense supreme 
Of needless dangers met, defied, disdained, 
And life exalted to an epic feat. 
How tame, how poor unspeakably, the lot 
Of travelers wheel-bound to dusty roads, 
And dismal safety ! their only care to dine 
Deliciously; their stern ambition then 
Another day to drive, and dine as well. 

But sport and jest here bubble gayly forth, 
And laughter as of boys on holiday, 



THE ASCENT. 77 

Makes life elate and young ; while each one still 
Ignores the unfinished furlongs' dreadful steep, 
And drunk with pleasure dreams no dream of 

fear. 
Then leap they to their feet again, refreshed, 
And like Odysseus on iEgean seas, 
Unsated with old pains and perils now foregone, 
Stand gladly forth to seek adventures new. 

Now falls a wildering mist, some rambling cloud, 
And now a driving shower, thick mountain dew, 
And then a dusty snow-flaw chokes the air 
With pale frost-orchids, fluttering thickly down, 
Breeding sharp winter in those summer skies ; 
While Boreas blows his strident Alpine horn 
About their ears with thought-confusing din, 
And sings his ancient jocund jodel to the crag. 
Then swift returns the sun in withering strength, 
Turning December back to hot July, 
And melting tired limbs with swooning heats. 



78 MONTE ROSA. 

All weathers flit about the indifferent cliff, 
Like martins round their summer-haunted eaves, 
And flutter forth in weaving interchange, 
Now cheerful, now severe, or wet, or dry, 
Or hot, or cold, or gusty, or serene. 
Mayhap a little cloud, mere cap-full of light fog, 
Is gendered where they climb, and thunders 

born 
Of the quick-curdling mist growl furiously 
With voices leonine about their steps, 
While snaky lightnings hissing round their heads 
From cloud to rock, dart forth their forked 

threats, 
As were the mountain spirits roused to guard 
Their shrines invaded by intrusive guests. 

Or should such awful chance befall, more dread 
And worse than worst of that which coward 

fear 
Had forecast of, on some steep snow-side caught, 



TEE ASCENT. 79 

Midway to perch of safety while they haste, 
A sudden crack as of a pistol fired 
Cleaves the still air with warning ominous, 
That chills the blood within their startled heart. 
And while they pause a breath in vague sur- 
mise, 
Their foothold strangely sinks a little space, 
Then swiftly slips, then slides amain, and then, 
Dragged downward with an awful, mighty rush, 
Fast and still faster with a torrent's speed, 
They pour along the steep no more as men, 
But things, mere driftwood in a freshet flood, 
Or tossing wreckage in a tempest surf, 
Blinded and stifled with an icy dust, 
Stunned by the thunderous roar, whirled now 

aloft, 
And now engulfed beneath the foamy snow, 
In the living avalanche devoured quick, 
They slide, ah luckless coasters ! headlong 
down 



80 MONTE ROSA. 

Towards some high brink, whence the abyss 

yawns sheer. 
No breath for words ! no time for thought ! no 

place 
For eager muscle ! guides, companions, all 
O'ermastered in the unconquerable drift, 
In Nature's grasp held powerless, atoms 
Of her insensate frame, they fare as leaves 
In the dark rush of wild November gales, 
Or desert sands in the hot simooms' fell play ; 
One gasp for breath, one strangled bitter cry, 
And the wild snow closes smothering in, 
And moulds their forms with icy lines about, 
And crushes life out, and entombs them there, — 
Nobler than kings Egyptian in their pyra- 
mids, 
Embalmed in the mountain mausoleum, 
And part of all its grand unconsciousness 
Forever. 

Its still dream resumes the mount, 



THE ASCENT. 81 

The sun his brightness keeps, for unto them 
The living men are naught, and naught the 

dead, 
No more than snows that slide, or stones that 

roll. 

But voiding this, the extreme catastrophe, 
Our mountaineers make good their dangerous 

way ; 
Though sore of foot, and with the snow-glare 

dazed, 
Their foreheads fretted with the prickly sweat, 
They lag upon the path, and loiter slow. 
Now joy departs, and grim endurance comes, 
Unflinching Spartan trained to take the worst. 
Oft crave they halt, and oft their mutinous eyes 
Accuse the unstooping summit, still so high. 
Give wings, the Andean condor's vasty stroke ! 
Or thews, the nimble chamois' legs of steel ! 
To clear exultantly the arduous space, 

6 



82 MONTE ROSA. 

That mocks them laggards, and derides their 

march. 
In vain ! no Jove-sent # eagle stoops his flight, 
As once for love to fair-limbed Ganymede, 
From circles empyrean to their aid ; 
From far Arabia no genii haste 
To waft them through divided airs on high. 
Their staggering muscles still must strain, 
Of their own blood must courage spring ; 
And soon, for lo, the greatest horror last ! 
Danger undreamed of, monstrous, measure- 
less! 
The final ArSte, the toothed and shaggy rib 
Of that sky-piercing spire, that from the base 
So delicate and dainty smooth appeared, 
Uprears its ragged length, — the only path. 
Scarce Strasburg's tower more perilous to 

climb ! 
A bent, keen-pointed scimitar of crag 
Set upright on its hilt, with scant an edge 



THE ASCENT. 83 

More broad than Moslem's bridge to Paradise, 
And deeply gashed in elemental wars, 
It cuts the clouds, and cleaves compacted storms. 
Above our climbers' heads so dizzily 
It reaches on, and on, beyond weak sight, 
Flouting poor skill, and cooling braggart 
tongues. 

Who shall attempt that fanged and serrate rim ? 
Who wrestle death on that perfidious wedge, 
Sleet-mailed and bitten by the vicious winds? 
Who scale that footless perch, a crazy stair 
For suicides and angered souls 
Of life a-weary? Clear half a thousand feet 
Of panic peril, either frenzied flank, 
A pitiless, nerve-shaking precipice, 
Shoots down to lancet-pointed rocks, a bed 
Of heartless cheer to him who falls. Well now 
May weaklings quail, for boldest mountaineers 
Of earlier centuries turned their backs 



84 MONTE ROSA. 

On this grim devil's ladder, whence one slip 
Were quick perdition, and the last ; but so 
They left to better-metaled Englishmen 
The shining hour of those who dare and win. 

Yet now the stalwart shoulders of a guide 
Will bear the timid o'er it, if one choose 
To save his courage for brave hours of talk. 
But few will flinch where hardier souls lead on. 
Stolid with old resolve our comradeship, 
Their faces set as flint and hearts as hard, 
All wordless grasp that thin hand - breadth of 

stone, 
That sleeted edge, that sun-groined icicle, 
To dangle there 'twixt cliff and sky, and climb, 
Worse than the pendant Icelander, who gropes 
Along the wave-washed sea-crags to despoil 
The eider's downy nest, despising death 
If so his brood lie warm. 

Now hand and foot, 



THE ASCENT. 85 

Your best of cunning lend ! each muscle now 
Be tense as steel, flexible as withe ! 
Quick-eyed, cool-nerved, stout-hearted all, 
Cleave to those rock-teeth with the clutch of 

fate! 
Make sure your foothold, grappled to each step ! 
Let no confusing glances stray to sound 
The windy gulfs of those brain-whirling voids ! 
Be shrewd to shun each rocking stone, each 

wreath 
Of frozen snow out-drifted o'er the abyss ! 
Grow like an ivy to a crumbling tower, 
And, creeping push your wary way above, 
And still above, and yet again above ! 
No mirth nor word enlivens now the task, 
No vagrant eye, no playful sportiveness 
Nor idle thought relieves the grinding toil. 
Breathless and voiceless drag they toilsome on ; 
Point after point they take, expecting each 
To be the last, and still in each deceived. 



86 MONTE ROSA. 

An hour, a tedious, tardy-footed hour 
Of dogged clamber, then the slender tip, 
Goal of their search, desired long with pain, 
Draws nearer, nearer to delighted sight, 
The haughty crest bates its unbending pride ; 
Supreme 'mid heaven an isle of lonely stone, 
One stable speck 'mid shoreless seas of air, 
It waits their conquering steps; then tranquil 

still 
As marble Juno in her seated calm, 
The Monte Rosa in her stateliness 
Receives them bustling where they proudly 

come, 
And yields them transient lodgment where for 

aye 
She dwells 'neath pure resplendent snows, her 

crown ; 
Nor lends her heed to their exhausted cheer 
Which dies still-born in that high solitude, 
And echoless void of sky. But they glad 



THE ASCENT. 87 

As far-spent swimmers on a longed-for beach, 
Not waiting, throw themselves along, and laugh 
A silent laugh, sweeping a free glance round 
The ringed horizon of the circle-world, 
Where dimmed sight fails in purple depths of 
space. 



II. 

THE SUMMIT. 

And what a vision greets their weary gaze ! 
What realms of wonder, chaos of wild dreams 
Out-chaosed, kingdoms and seas of tumult ! 
A granite continent asunder torn, 
And plowed as though fierce earthquakes oft 

had driven 
Their shares beneath its rocky ribs, and turned 
Their crossing furrows here ; or as one day 
The welded globe itself o'er-strained had burst 
With swift explosion of all elements 
Revolted 'gainst their holdings, and discharged 
Its ragged fragments on offending plains. 
Alp upon* Alp, mount upon mountain piled ! 
Ridges sublime towered with sublimer peaks ! 



THE SUMMIT. 89 

Valaisiatt, Oberland, and Dauphine, 

Graian, and Cottian, and Maritime ! 

Range behind range banked to the bended skies, 

And proudly burnished by the full-orbed sun ! 

Huge forms in armies, fresh as had they risen 

An hour ago, and dressed their glittering ranks ; 

Like hosts of fair-skinned Northmen on foray, 

Encamped afield in Gothic turbulence, 

Scarce chief obeying, loyal to small law, 

And white their mighty tents, as pitched but 

yesterday. 
All living Vikings seem, about to move 
And clash their armor, while they ask who 

comes 
Intruding on their guarded bivouac. 
The nearest thus : 

The further masses merged 
Through wild disorders to far-stretching lines, 
That fortressed cities feign, the nameless burgs 
Of superhuman folk, the precipice 



90 MONTE ROSA. 

Their frowning rampart, cloucUgirt peaks their 

towers, 
Impassable ravines their moats of dread, 
Bastions unstormed save of the jealous heavens. 
Their parapets a wondrous sky-line draw, 
With pyramids, rude Memnons, monoliths 
Adorned as had dead Egypt lent her spoil, 
Or greater than Egyptian built him new, 
And vaster, marked with older hieroglyphs 
Than Luxor boasts, or buried Nineveh ; 
Scriptures of thrust and strain, of fracture, fire, 
And frost, by those perpetual scribes, who 

scrawled 
These no man's records of a no man's day. 
Here as the distance lengthens, spire and crag 
Draw in perspective to vast colonnades, 
To which St. Peter's are as river reeds 
To California's pines, fading in haze 
Beyond, where faint as truth when new the last, 
Their bases lost in grosser atmospheres, 
Hang strangely pendant to the arch of heaven. 



THE SUMMIT. 91 

How vast the magic-builded spectacle ! 

Unearthly architectures, frost-temples, 

And winter palaces of nature ! Sure 

Some Goth Aladdin must have set the slaves 

Of lamp and ring in their uncanny tribes, 

At bitter labors here to pile these towers 

In numbers so innumerable ! 

First show the great Valaisians, told before ; 

Then dreamily beyond the ribbon Rhone 

•The tall Bernesers of the Oberland, 

Pillars of cloud by day, at dusk of fire. 

Their chief, if chief may be 'mid such great peers, 

Grave Finster-Aarhorn's storm-girt pinnacle, 

Whose tower of silence mocks the wrecking 

years ; 
Then vestal Jungfrau, Amazon of maids, 
As for long-hindered nuptials still attired, 
Whose safe charms ten thousand rosy sunsets 
Flush with warm hues of youth, renewed in vain ; 
Next, her severe confessor, white-friar Monch, 



92 MONTE ROSA. 

Eldest Carthusian, ere Carthusians were, 
Prevents fair Jungfrau from the sculptured 

strength 
Of comely Eiger, knightly in his grace ; 
There Blumlis-Alp laments her blighted flowers, 
Gay asters, gentian blue, pale edelweiss, 
Whose nameless sweetness made that high air 

glad, 
Till, balked of lady's love, a wizard foul 
Her green fields buried 'neath charmed sheets 

of snow; 
There cloud-capped Wetterhorn's cathedral pile, 
Source of perennial streams ; its minster towers 
Fret the bright sky with various tracery. 

Leave these, and front another heaven, and lo ! 
Another pageant and a rival pomp : 
For distant Grivola looms silvery soft 
Against the south, where slant and sleep, 
In wondrous peacefulness unvisited, 



THE SUMMIT. 93 

The wide white meadows of Grand Paradis 
Enringed in black-mailed arms of scowling crag ; 
The wind-tormented crest of Les Ecrins 
Smoking in stony surge mid smoking clouds, 
And Monte Viso islanded in mist, 
Sustained by heart of rock against Time's en- 
mity; 
While eastward Piz Bernina's wimpled hood 
Upon the last horizon, — or is 't a cloud 
Far-glistening o'er the frosty Engadine ? 
And west, Mt. Blanc serene, whose perfect dome 
Shames silver cupolas of all the Czars 
To beggary, uprolls his lordly head 
From out the speary thick of his Aiguilles, 
And looks unchallenged monarch, o'er his peers, 
To stately Rosa, — king to his crowned queen. 

Below, so far that even the pirate hawk, 
Swooping for prey above the living fields, 
Would never spy what in the hollow hides, 



94 MONTE ROSA. 

Pinched gorges knit their unrelenting brows, 
And fertile valleys, rich with corn and vine, 
Bend their sweet stream-like curves as they 

were grooved 
By pushing glaciers of the chillier prime, 
That with their icy horns gored through the 

rock, 
And scourged the goodly meadows in their wrath, 
Slaying whole tribes of feather, fur, and fin. 
Here winds the deep, rock-bastioned Wispach 

vale, 
Perpetual acre of immortal death, 
And playground of all perils, where disport 
The stealthy village-smothering avalanche, 
The frightful land-slip, when the half-mount 

slides 
From its high vantage ruining to the plain ; 
The earthquake's shuddering mischief from deep 

ground, 
The bursting glacier's deluge unrestrained 



THE SUMMIT. 95 

Of giant ice-blocks swimming on swift floods, 

In awful inundation charging down 

Upon the helpless valley laid asleep, 

And sweeping off the herds, the crops, the soil, 

Dear lowly homes and families of men. 

There the Anzasca Canon, — fissure choked 

'Twixt throttling cliffs, that ban health-giving 

suns 
Save at the top of noon, and foul disease 
Engender 'mid its large sublimities. 
There happier Alagna's bowery gorge, 
Idyl of rippling foliage and gray stone, 
Where frothy cascades cool from springs of snow 
Fling out the drenching spray to weeping boughs 
That droop their pendulous leafage heavily ; 
The glossy chestnut blooms, the odorous birch 
And sweetly fruitful fig with laurels blend 
Immingling on the war-worn cheeks and brows 
Of mammoth bowlders, thick-strewn everywhere, 
A storm of rocky fragments thundered down 



96 MONTE ROSA. 

From Rosa's awful summit in the clouds, 
And left as harmless ruins moss-grown here. 
There Gressonay her broader vale expands 
In gentle swales mown bare as fresh-reaped 

fields 
By the keen glacier-draught that reaps unceas- 
ingly ; 
While lower slopes yield to Italian suns 
Rich Southern fruits ungrudgingly bestowed 
On the Teutonic strangers lingering there 
Mayhap from ancient forays long forgot. 
Fleet-footed brooklets, nurslings of the hills, 
Run gayly down each valley, full of haste, 
Gurgling to night and day their wordless song ; 
And other vales beside unfurl their folds, 
D'Ayas, Tournache, Pelline, and nameless more, 
That fan-like ray towards every vagrant wind, 
Towards Greek Marseilles and Lyons' silken 

mart ; 
Geneva, dear to Calvin and Voltaire, 



THE SUMMIT. 97 

Of creed and cavil the unaureoled saints ; 
Towards Nurnberg old, and Munich new by art ; 
The sea-queen Venice, Turin, lair of kings; 
And that low Mediterranean wave, 
Where boy Columbus oared his baby skiff, 
Upon its tamer billows nursing heart 
To dare the wild Atlantic's unsailed surge, 
And seeking old worlds hap to find a new; 
Towards Como's castled shores, Maggiore's isles, 
Where doves coo soft mid pure camelias' bloom, 
And Milan, whose still white cathedral walls 
Resent the whiter snow-lifts of these hills. 



III. 

WITH NATURE. 

But what a sight for men of burgs and glebes ! 

Such mighty circumstance, imperial pomp 

Out-braving all they boast of rich and great ! 

Intolerable commonplace disdained, 

And costliest majesties made friendly ! 

The high brought low, the low sunk to the 

abyss ! 
The haughty mountains leveled with the eye ! 
The earth-despising clouds beneath one's feet 
Confounded with the fields they still contemn ! 
The solid dome of firmament, that seemed 
To roof this crest, dissolves to breathing air, 
And breathing ether late one's native air 
Seen deep below shows like a lucid sea 



WITH NATURE. 99 

Spread in blue bays and gulfs of atmosphere, 
Where wave the trees as trailing water-weeds 
Wherein men rove as fish in denser seas, 
And seek their food, and find it in their kind, 
And find life dear, and full of changeful charm, 
And loathe to leave it, loving all its ways. 
A universe reversed ! heavens new, new earth ! 
Bosomed in peacefulness and sunny sleep. 
Mid-winter here, with tropic summer yon ! 
A long, long climb of ever-climbing line ! 
A fairy world of snow-peaks pale with height, 
And glacier-jeweled, draperied with fog ; 
Unsmiling pines that sentinel the crags, 
And ambuscade the gorges, whose gnarled arms 
Catch out at every vagabond of cloud 
Found loitering in their camps ; hamlets faint 
Between long tongues of glacier, perched so high 
It seems their villagers must live in heaven ; 
So steeply slant, their farms one day must slide 
With crop and chalet to the crouching vales ; 



100 MONTE ROSA. 

And rarely lodged on some out-thrusting ledge 
The pious chapel set, trace of man's pain ; 
The swooning lowlands as a garden rolled ; 
The sheeted lakes, and soundless waterfalls, 
And litter of gray shingle everywhere ! 

One broods o'er all in silence nigh to death, 
Scarce breathing lest the magic spectacle 
Like sleep-spun dreams dissolving fade and pass, 
And leave the old horizon long outworn, 
Wherein his life has wasted heretofore. 
The formless air in twinkling ripples stirred 
Its shimmering ether pours around the whole, 
Gold, amber, azure, amaranth, and pearl, 
All colors blended in its lucent films, 
That smooth the rough, and make the savage 

fair, 
Weaving the mazy interrupted lines 
Of thwarted range, and rudely-cloven ravine 
In one vast complex of grand harmonies, 



WITH NATURE. 101 

Where every chaos melts to ordered grace. 
Not great Beethoven riding on the blasts 
Of his melodious passion at its height 
More graciously doth blend his storm of 

sound, — 
Its swelling angers, its heart-piercing pains, 
Its outbursts of deep joy, that die away 
To breathless peace wherein the soul finds 

God, — 
In symphonies imperishable as man, 
Than greater Nature sways this rocky storm, 
This hideous turbulency, and barren wreck 
Of shattered continent to harmonies 
Ethereal, majestic, wild, serene, 
One strain untroubled of harsh discords born. 
Drifts o'er the whole a spell of utter sleep, 
A silence deep as that of midnight skies, 
So undisturbed that all a picture seems, 
And we the painted men impassively 
As figures on the unrolled canvas set. 



102 MONTE ROSA. 

Far spins that truant ball our whilom earth ! 
A little length, such as a man might pace 
Within an idle hour upon the plain, 
Hath raised us up to some celestial realm, 
Whence we look strangely down upon this globe 
As on an exile planet swinging clear 
Its rounded ball in airy space beneath ; 
Some nearer moon through telescope descried, 
A stranger orb, and foreign to our feet : 
Though vaguely deem we still that once we 

knew 
Its scenes, and lived its troubled citizens, 
In days long gone, and wearily forgot. 

But what is this lighter than infant's breath, 
No mist, nor voice, nor viewless herald's touch, 
Yet sure some Presence rare, impalpable, 
Through void skies leaning towards the skyey 

peak, 
Which streams, a spectral form diaphonous, 



WITH NATURE. 103 

Above the high-piled ranges near and far, 
The sunless deep defiles, and farthest stretch 
Of copious distance, to the cloudy verge 
Of bounded space ? More faint than zephyr's 

breath 
It lays soft spells upon us and overcomes 
Our thought : 

Is it some Genius of the hill ? 
The Spirit of the peak, that ne'er descends 
To disenchanted leas, but here at home 
A dainty Ariel and delicate 
Sways glimmering, wavering, whispering every- 
where ? 

Phantom most strange, elusive, general! 
Divine World-Spirit ! universal Power ! 
Soul of things visible in deep response 
To what seems soul in us, — our greater self — 
Out-breathing from vast Nature in her wilds ! 
The Pan so loved and tenderly adored 



104 MONTE ROSA. 

When men were artless children ! Faintly falls 
Its breeze-born voice abroad unsyllabled, 
Scarce heard above the heart-beats, and yet 

seems 
Burdened with utterance of mysteries 
That crowd around our being from its birth. 
And each ear listens reverently subdued ; 
Savage or saint, savant or dreamless man 
Of shrewd affairs, or he whom life has drained 
Of all sweet fearfulness, alike lends heed. 
A messenger and message comes unsought, 
A phantom touch plays lightly o'er his sense, 
A brush of ghostly wings invisible 
Makes rustle near his heart ; the mountain god 
Approaches his high seat ; and deeply moved 
With ancient Hebrew of a rural faith 
He looks up to the hills whence comes his Help ; 
Or with wild Aryan warriors, kindred old, 
Sees in the peerless white Himalaya 
The Brama's shining home with His strong 

gods ; 



WITH NATURE. 105 

Or half believes, even late as yesterday, 
With oft-defeated guides that Spirits strong 
Hold safe the keep of frowning Matterhorn, 
While yet that rock beat all vain climbers back. 
And still a God ! a God ! rapt feeling cries ; 
His face makes beauty in that formless air, 
His hand weaves splendors of that flimsy mist, 
He builds a magic into crag and glen, 
And with His living presence cunningly 
Blends scene and seer to one accordant joy. 
So trembling through the landscape like a sun 
That breaks in drizzly dawn on ice-mailed trees 
And glances fitfully down prismed boughs, 
A thousand suns where yet no light shines clear, 
This glimmering presence faint and fugitive 
Breaks coyly from the prospect everywhere, 
And sparkling like frail dew-drops deftly hides, 
As were one glint enough, in mystery. 

Of old, beholders close to nature held 
Found mighty gods and glorious enough 



106 MONTE ROSA. 

In these pale visions of an unknown world: 
Dyaus, old Kronos, Zeus the son of Time, 
Demeter-earth, bright Helios, and Jove 
The cloud-compeller, Pallas wise, strong Mars, 
Dew-bearing Dawn on mead-besprinkled steeds, 
A god for every cloud, and tree, and stream, 
Till glamour made the world a home of ghosts 
And plain meek earth, creature of airs and soils, 
Robbed of her daily powers and homely use 
Became a baleful sacredness and vain, 
While men went groping for the rainbow's gold, 
Or begging life where but the lifeless stood, 
And seeking gods where subtlest elements 
Their mightier service proffered unperceived. 

Would gods were present ! How would doubt- 
ing men 
Give them high greeting and dear reverence due ! 
But none comes nearer, none breaks through, 
Nor rends the unlif ted veil ; no clear wise word 



WITH NATURE. 107 

Drifts softly forth from out the insensate noise ; 

A goodly world unhaunted lies serene 

In its sufficing loveliness ; no more ! 

The vagrant voice is but an errant wind, 

A sea-shell's murmurous nothing oft rehearsed. 

Such helpless voice divine Prometheus heard, 

And deemed it ample in his heat of rage, 

When chained on Caucasus, as fire to flint, 

Groaning he lay, and praying for some god 

To rescue him unhappy, ate his great heart out, 

The while he dreamed Zeus' vulture battened 

on it. 
Now is his Hercules become a name 
For solar myth, and his tormentor Zeus, 
With all his brilliant compeers, left for dead, 
And dead the fires that on their altars blazed ; 
No longer sit their councils on the hills, 
Nor flash their forms before the impassive sun, 
Nor stoop they now to men in battle's stress, 
Nor from the solemn cave breathe oracles. 



108 MONTE ROSA. 

But pushed by ruthless Science in her quest 
From secret haunts whereof their hearts were 

glad, 
They cease from gorge or peak to be discerned, 
Retired indignant to the farthest star, 
Where man may never hail them till he die. 
So vainly strain man's eager eyes, his ears 
As vainly hearken ; the wavering mists 
Close round veiled Isis hidden as of old, 
Nor open through to Deity whom thus 
By searching none finds out ; still vainly beat, 
As butterflies their fickle-spotted wings, 
Our rainbow hopes against the mail of secrets ; 
The Mysteries keep their visors closed 
On peak and plain, nor write their legend out 
On rock or temple anywhere ; and still 
They challenge each new-comer, what reply 
His life or lips may frame respecting them, 
While they restrain their tongues from telling, 

yea, 



WITH NATURE. 109 

Or nay, concerning human destiny ; 

And like the dead keep silence unperturbed. 

And yet the charm remains; the wizard spell 
Weaves sweet delusions round the willing sense, 
As round the swaying cobra with his reeds 
The wily Indian weaves a thrall of sounds. 
The disillusioned mountains keep their state ; 
Eyes dew with tears beholding, raptures thrill 
To pain ; soft silence brushes babbling tongues ; 
The beautiful, bewildering immensity 
O'erpowers our souls with longing vague, and 

sweet. 
We cease from thought, and shade our mortal 

brows, 
Our eyes are not attempered to such light, 
Our hearts not strung to such large harmonies. 
The two-fold glory of the earth and sky 
Far-stretching to their one horizon line 
Subdues us utterly ; we seem unfleshed ; 



110 MONTE ROSA. 

Like homeless frigate-birds that freely live 
On ever-outstretched wing untiringly, 
The swift imagination spreads her plumes 
For one immortal flight o'er all eye sees, 
And all that lies unseen beyond, to touch 
The rim and verge of last infinity; 
In vain ! her pinions droop while yet 
She skims the threshold ; astronomic spaces 
Are too wide ; and then all space and endless 

time 
Come crowding on to ask inclusion due 
Within the airy voyage ere 't is done ; 
Mid-heaven fails its strength, falters its quest 
Disquieted, dismayed, exhausted thought 
Can only gasp, whence came all this, and why, 
And whither goes, and what shall be its end, 
And ours who ask ? And get no answer clear, 
Not from the earth out-rolled, nor ocean gray, 
Nor from the spacious heaven o'er-domed, nor 

from 



WITH NATURE. Ill 

The ambitious mind with its increasing powers : 

But baffled still one lingers as in trance 

Full of surmises indolently vague, 

Then fearless launches out on vacancy, 

In search of some strong Maker undisclosed, 

Whom no thought measures, but whose hope 

transports, 
As noble music when at piercing heights 
It beats the troubled air to ecstasy, 
And lifts the spirit speechless into bliss. 
Seems all a sight from Mount Delectable, 
Gateway, and garden of lost Paradise, 
A heavenly land where no man knows of pain. 

So Nature ! with thy strong enchantments, thou 
Dost work thy will on us thy children fond, 
Till falling on thy breast enraptured, prone, 
We ache to know thy heart, and heart of hearts, 
And swooning in thy beauty crave thy grace. 
But unconcerned thou dost elude us still, 



112 MONTE ROSA. 

And keep us at a distance half estranged, 
And though we are thy children, feel thy pulse, 
And genial throb of being in each vein, 
Yet never close we with thee perfectly, 
Chilled in our passion, in our love restrained 
By thy composed and sweet indifference ; 
Though still like doting children must we love, 
And bless thee our enchanter, till we die. 

So lightly dost thou hold us, and so cool 
Thy custom, and demeanor, Nature ! that 
No more than for dumb beast, or growing flower, 
Thou dost concern thyself for us, or care ! 
Yet to ourselves we seem thy master work, 
Thy crown, and jewels in thy crown, so high, 
That o'er thyself in swelling syllables 
We proudly vaunt, and boasting make loud 

claim 
To greatness greater than thine own, 
To higher lineage, diviner end, 



WITH NATURE. 113 

And destiny excelling thine, as sun tlie stars ; 
But thou in thy serene complacency 
Dost heed our claim no whit, dost treat us still 
As wayside accidents, as mists of morn, 
And like a mist dissolvest us to nothing. 

So small are we indeed and vain ! to whom 
These trifling ranges of repeated ridge, 
These trivial knolls seem mighty, lying here 
A mower's swath, or weathered windrow raked 
Upon the uncumbered rondure of large earth, 
Or rank of haycocks waiting for the wain 
On the good farmer's closely-shaven mead. 
The shortness of our stature measuring all. 
Is guilty of their mightiness to us, 
As his slight body makes his bushel-heap 
To the atom-ant an ample hill, whereon 
His grand affairs transacted ripen apace ; 
But easily our girdled globe doth roll 



114 MONTE ROSA. 

Its circle full, and smooth, though roughened 

thus 
By these huge jutting promontories 
Within its orb, as rolls an orange true 
Upon its wrinkled rind ; our smallness sole 
Makes them so great. Insects of space are we, 
By our own globe and habitation dwarfed 
To crickets on its rugous continents, 
That chirp their shining summer hour, and 

cease ; 
While earth itself a petty star, and mean 
With Sirius, or far Aldebaran, 
Compared, or any nightly orb, swings on 
Its annual round scarce noticed mid the spheres. 
Insects of bounded space, and straitened time ! 
To whom these hills eternal seem, so old 
Their recent day, so fixed their crags ! while 

they 
With ceaseless waste consume their rocky 

strength, 



WITH NATURE. 115 

And feel their vast antiquity to be 

But as a breathless second on the score 

Of that eternity, whose ages blind 

Fleet as the clock-ticks sound their passing by. 

While we as music of a player's horn 

Blare out upon the silence and are done. 

But small or large, what matter ! what we are, 

we are. 
Naught cares the well-housed tortoise in his 

shell 
That he is yet nor hare nor swallow fleet. 
Still bound our nerves with exultations, hopes ; 
Still breathe we this high air with rapture, still 
See earth dilated to a palace large, 
Roofed with blue bravery of the cloud-sailed 

sky, 
Lit by the unnumbered lustres of the sun, 

Swept by the wandering custom of all winds, 

Home of dark grandeurs, and fair loveliness ; 



116 MONTE ROSA. 

Our fathers' home and to our children dear, 
Scene of the million happy human lives, 
That crowd its continents, and sail its seas. 
O Earth ! too little is thy fullness bruited forth, 
Too much absorbed in men man lives untouched 
By thy unceasing movement, endless calm, 
And loses oft his soul in drudgeries 
That bring no joy nor lead to ampler life. 
And still thou liest smilingly content 
Unsmitten by contradiction and unvexed, 
Thy hills uplifted like a fairy's boon, 
And with no words dost call us, offering 
Not grain alone but gladness in thy face, 
With good and fair and whatso'er gives power. 
Rejected, feared, or scorned, neglected still 
With quiet patience as of sleeping child 
Thou leavest all for all, and him that takes 
Thy meaning thou dost fill with gracious gifts, 
And such rare transport, that the vanished gods 
Seem re-disclosed to him, and daedal earth 



f WITH NATURE. 117 

Enough without a better heaven ; for him 
Comes each new day a fairy prince to kiss 
His lips, and waken him to larger life, 
Bring him the royal sun, the pensive moon, 
The deep, uncounted stars, the rolling change 
Of seasons old as sea sweet wooing airs, 
Or storms of overwhelming majesty, 
The magic mystery of being, all 
To draw him out of stony moods of gloom, 
To fill his days with hours of beaten gold, 
To touch his nature with the strength of hills, 
To cool his brow with freshness of blithe morns, 
To give his mind the large horizon's span, 
And to his heart the peace of sunny wolds. 
Such dreams salute us on this air-girt top, 
And summit of the world ; our souls escape 
To novel liberties, franchises strange ; 
We rend the withes of custom, rise and fall 
Infuriate on the coarse Philistine hordes 
Of common thought, stale reason, and mean use, 



118 MONTE ROSA. 

Rebuke our wrinkled creeds, conceits, weak 

fears, 
And all that hinders from unleashed desire ; 
Ourselves we free as birds, — the libertines 
Of heaven's azure fields : no hurrying cloud, 
Nor yon unmastered eagle sailing lone, 
Whose seldom-striking pinions fan the winds 
Of farthest continents, while he not recks 
What land swims small beneath him, soars 

more free. 
Us now, repentant skeptics, takes the god ; 
Our blood runs wild like those who, drunk with 

wine, 
Danced madly in the ancient mysteries, 
And whirled in Maenad rout, and cried aloud 
Evoe, Bacche ! Ah, Evoe, hail ! 
And felt the god suffusing every sense 
That with the orgy all of self expired. 
And we are drunk with Nature at her feast, 
We are ourselves the genii of the peaks ; 



WITH NATURE. 119 

We call to Lyskamm, Breithorn, Matterhorn, 
To Weisshorn in the distance, Mischabel, 
And every shining summit far and near, 
To hail them as our brothers, living parts 
Of great organic nature one with us ; 
And with that chained Prometheus on his rock, 
We cry, O Ocean old, and ye gray mists, 
And swift-winged breezes, and much-laughing 

waves, 
All-seeing sun, and earth our mother dear, 
Gods of the prime, in the white dawn of man, 
We keep to you this day a revelry, 
Ancestral, not Semitic, Aryan pure, 
And to us Aryans kin, as at your shrines 
We worship with the souls of cousins gone, 
Who, living once as now we live, still found 
In you their strength, their wonder, and their 

Admit us to your mysteries ; make large 
Our hearts with benedictions new, 



120 MONTE ROSA. 

Give us to cherish all your mighty laws, 

To love your sights, your sounds, your secret 

powers, 
And with you liye unsaddened, unreproached, 
Till we lie down beneath you undisturbed. 
As some worn saint from penance drear re- 
leased, 
And floating out of tortured flesh to God, 
Beholds draw near the imperishable dawn 
Whose peaceful hope receives the holy dead, 
So drifting in our mountain ecstasy, 
And bathed in dreamy atmospheres we see 
Approaching through a vast of space, the peace 
That folds the round world in its soft embrace 
And bounds of being as an ether folds 
The tethered planets in their heavenly rings. 



IV. 

THE DESCENT. 

But though enraptured, men may not abide 
On Monte Rosa's slender point, nor build 
Their tabernacles amid its clouds, 
Plain-nurtured creatures, they the plain require. 
The genial noontide dies to ugly night, 
And night so near the stars is harsh with cold, 
While shameless hunger coming like a dun 
To splendid palace doors sues fretfully ; 
For whom grows naught on this heaven-pierc- 
ing spire. 
One lingering here would find his frugal fare 
Leaner than forage of starved grasshoppers 
That cling to mullein seared by nipping frosts 
Of late September to brown barrenness. 



122 MONTE ROSA. 

So now prosaic guides discreetly wise, 
Upgathering all their gear command descent. 
And all the more that the low, lonely wind 
Lifts to a louder key its drony hum 
Spinning a thread of snow from each slim spire, 
That like a hairy comet streams abroad, 
Of coming tempest harbinger, and flag. 
Now urge foreboding guides unwonted speed; 
In haste run all, like fleeing Israel, 
To that unshorn Arete, again to swing 
Unhappy bodies there, in dismal case, 
And curse its raveled raggedness, with sighs 
That flesh were harder or tall rock more soft. 
Another lunacy, that grim descent, 
Unlike good Vergil's facile road to hell ! 
The upward perils doubly perilous 
Recur ; the uncertain feet grope blindly down, 
No eye their hold foreseeing; painfully 
The hands let go the unwonted grasp above. 
And while like seals on land they fumble on 



THE DESCENT. 123 

With cumbrous care, like gliding seals at sea 
The rapid tempest skims the etherial wave, 
Borne on more winds than jEolus held, that fall 
Like birds of prey with furious beak and claw 
Upon the mangled ridge, their ancient quarry, 
Unconquered still through blustering centuries, 
Nor giving heed to those poor human mice, 
That creep in mortal danger down its face. 
And what a place for men in such a war 
Of elements unloosed ! an ice-glazed edge 
Of crag, whereon the sturdy mountain goat 
For all his climbing were afraid ! A gale 
Would pluck the ruffled falcon from his perch, 
Or sweep the windy crow down leagues of sky ! 
Three miles of storm-swept space above the 

round 
And general globe, with but this untrimmed 

spar, 
This stony topmast of the good ship " Earth " 
To hang by. Even the night-wrapped sea-boy 



124 MONTE ROSA. 

Upon the switching yards when waves swim 

high, 
And drench the humming cordage, is less far 
From gentle safety ; while scurrying fogs 
Thicker than banks of metaphysic cloud, 
And drearier, close darkly in, as night 
Itself were falling out of time ; flies swift 
The petaled snow, and crooked lightnings strike 
From cloud to cliff mid thunderous echoes 

roused. 
Now life's sweet wine to bitter wormwood turns ; 
The beauteous Day deforms her shining face, 
And hides a withered crone beneath the skies ; 
All landmarks disappear, all sight cut off, 
The wide world narrows to an eagle's roost; 
The men are left alone, they and the storm. 
Chilled, blinded, stiff, hands freezing, freezing 

feet, 
They still hold on their formidable way, 
Wrapping that hateful twist of stone about, 



THE DESCENT. 125 

As pendulous spider wraps his slender thread 
With all his legs, yet making tardiest way ; 
And now they swing from axe-head planted deep 
Above, now slip roped fast down dripping ici- 
cles, 
Or scramble warily mid loosened stones, 
That tottering drop to soundless depths below. 
And oft the anxious guide's sharp cry rings out 
Above the roar of storm, " Take care ; don't 

slip; 
Take time," and oft he strains the slackened 

rope ; 
But if some bungler trips, with anguish shrieks, 
" For Heaven's sake, care ! Hold fast, be sure ! " 
While louder screeds the gale, and fans the 

Arete 
With measureless wide wing unceasingly, 
Like the mysterious roc of wonder tale : 
Still on they grope fog -smothered, yet un- 
harmed, 



126 MONTE ROSA. 

Till youth's light heart quick rallied into play, 
Finds all half-jest, and laughs within the storm ; 
When one raw tyro numbed by windy cold 
Turning an ugly corner backward slips, 
And stumbles toward a fatal plunge cloud- 
swathed, 
Upon the Lyskamm side of naked precipice, 
Where any fall, like winged Mercury, 
Leads swift to Pluto and the sunless fields. 
But quick as viewless word, which that wild 

drudge 
The lightning runs with, leaps the undaunted 

guide, 
His life flung on the hazard instantly, 
To clutch the luckless stumbler as he reels ; 
And bending all his lustihood to task, 
With one great lurch of his resistless arm 
Swings him across the knife-edge like a babe; 
And since no time to get his footing there 
Is left, he rather leaps than falls 



THE DESCENT. 127 

Down the sharp rival slope, less precipice 
Though scarcely less, upon the northern face 
Where seamless ice and glassy smooth runs down 
To deadly steeps an instant's dash below. 
There flash they down a double meteor, 
Scarce seen, when gone, towards that awful 

brink, 
Where waits the primal Nihilist, calm death. 
But now the cool-brained Swiss, shrewd moun- 
taineer, 
Knit to his man as grasping hawk to fowl, 
Bites deep his axe-point in the frozen slide, 
Till hangs the trusty steel in its own groove 
And checks their flight in mid destruction 

stayed, 
One bold moment's work, no more ! but moment 
Laced with all the threads of spinning Fates. 

So holding on with enforced stubbornness, 
The party finds its way whole and unmarred, 



128 MONTE ROSA. 

To the large bosses now fresh-clad in snow, 
Whence the Arete springs forth its dizzy spire ; 
Here easy foothold offers rapid course, 
Yet mockingly, for where at morn the snow 
Night-crusted gave a marble floor as laid 
For conquering caliphs, now the soft flakes lie 
In fluffy lightness, hindering every stride 
As feathery scruples clog ambition's way. 
But since the worst seems past, and danger less, 
The weary men go carelessly, nor heed 
Repeated admonitions of the guides, *> 
But straggle wide and try to shorten space, 
Thinking the tedious miles remaining still 
But frigid drudgery unspiced with danger's zest ; 
And trudging on unroped they find the storm 
A blithe adventure rich in novelty. 
But prowling peril with a stealthy tread 
Haunts every Alpine path, and suddenly 
One comrade makes a short glissade, where 
shows 



THE DESCENT. 129 

No harm, and like a wanton boy skims down 
A slope, but losing foothold as he slides, 
Turns from his course, and o'er an unseen brink 
Rolls headlong, disappearing like a ghost 
That noiseless flits along, without a word. 
Engulfed and swallowed clean within the jaws 
Of a wide-spread crevasse, whose steely lips, 
Fringed like a shark's with gleaming fangs of 

fear, 
Grin horrible, the glacier's ghastly smile, 
Portal and pit of an unshoveled grave. 

Now what a thrilling outcry rends the air ! 
What pallid terror sits on every cheek ! 
What dark foreboding clouds each knitted brow ! 
And chief the faithful guides, who fullest know 
How deep the peril, stand amazed with fear. 
All huddle round the fatal brink, and bend 
<Into the twilight chasm, and call down 
And listen fearfully, to hear at last 

9 



130 MONTE ROSA. 

One muffled groan steal up the rayless pit, 
Then utter stillness, as the dead are still. 
Now aching fear lends bungling hands and slow 
To frantic zeal ; while tremblingly they join 
The ropes in one, and knot it fast about 
An eager guide, — too eager in his fear, — 
Who quickly then is lowered between the walls 
And icy jaws of that unfathomed crevasse. 
Down, far down into the chilly darkness 
He descends, peering this way and that 
In search of their lost comrade, finding naught, 
And groping still, when with a hasty run 
The ill-tied knot, weak in its fastening, slips, 
And parting midway drops the pendant Swiss 
Within the death-trap. Whither ? Ah, whither ? 
Who knows whither ? They only know that 

two 
Are gone, and one perhaps is killed ; and both 
Imperiled utterly need swift release, 
And half the priceless rope is in the chasm. 



THE DESCENT. 131 

Those on the brink, with slackened cord in hand, 
A moment sit as dazed, stunned^ paralyzed, 
Feeling a horror of great darkness fall, 
As on the sleeping song-birds falls the owl 
Devouring happy broods, melodious of joy. 
And that black tragedy, life sometimes is, 
Comes bearing down upon them, flying at peak 
The death - head's flag, with fierce disasters 

manned. 
In such an hour the heart grows old as time, 
And dreamily seems one with sufferers 
Of every age and clime ; with martyrs, slaves, 
With hopeless prisoners, men wrecked at sea, 
On prairies lost, or bayed by ravening wolves, 
Or anyhow set on by fierce Calamity 
With his blood-thirsty hounds ; one bends be- 
neath 
The undivided woes accumulate 
Of all his troubled race since time bore man, 
In his own form and single misery. 



132 MONTE ROSA. 

Time seems a dream of dreams, and man Time's 

fool, — 
The flying football of its angry hours. 

But moments now are precious, here 's no hour 
To indulge in wasteful grief. The men below 
Craye speediest rescue ; minutes are as gold. 
Swiftly new ropes are spliced, and coats are lent 
To give more length ; and soon a second Swiss 
Is on his downward way unterrified 
By all foregone mishap, who finding late 
His comrade-guide unhurt, calls loudly up 
The joyful news ; the narrowing chasm had 

caught 
His falling body in its wedgy jaws, 
A trifling pace below, whence his good axe, 
Plied skillfully, might work him full release ; 
A little toil untrammels him entire, 
And quick the ropes re-joining both resume 
Their cheerless search, and grope about the 

cavern, 



THE DESCENT, 133 

Crowding their way along the closing walls, 
Two ghastly precipices of dripping ice, 
Till finally they light upon their man 
Lying motionless, insensible, lodged fast 
Upon a ragged ice-shelf boldly pushed 
Against the opposing wall, where drawing in 
The trenched crevasse constricts its gulfy throat 
To half its former breadth. There, still as dead, 
One arm hung listlessly from off the shelf, 
His dank hair dripping with the ice-dew, stark, 
His garments torn, and frozen to the ledge, 
Their comrade lies in such an evil plight 
As stuns his finders, finding him so low, 
And scarce of his salvation seems a hope. 
Here is small space to put forth half their 

force, 
So strait the cave, so close its mighty jaws, 
That like a coffin hug their victim in, 
And gives scant room to swing the trenchant 

axe 



134 MONTE ROSA. 

And cut their fellow loose ; but manfully, 
Like faithful Switzers, losing no dear time, 
They ply their utmost skill, their utmost 

strength, 
And work as those who hold another's life 
In fee; since still they feel a heart-beat faint, 
A flutter of spent life, thanks to the slope 
Of ice-wall, where, though steep, the hapless man 
Had rather slid than dropped to his cold perch. 

Above, the rest sit gloomy on that evil brink, 
Holding the loosened rope, and full of boding 

fears, 
Their friend, themselves, in such a desperate 

plight, 
And life seems scarce a boon in such black hour. 
And anxiously they wait a sign to pull 
Aloft, while flit the dreary moments on, 
To find them waiting still in hope deferred. 
At last the signal comes, and drawing slow, 






THE DESCENT. 135 

They raise — a guide exhausted, strained, dis- 
mayed, 
And pale with strenuous effort still in vain, 
For still their friend is fast ensepulchred. 
How chill fares sinking hope in each warm 

heart ! 
And haggard grows the waning day, the while 
Deaf Nature unrelenting makes no sign, 
But storms along as recklessly as were 
Our men but stones, and their sweet lives no 

more 
Than frosted leaves; the riotous elements 
Prolong their revels ; thunder, lightning, sleet, 
In wild Walpurgis' dance their demon-parts 
Sustain unweariedly ; how far from men ! 
How far from shelter, food, or friendliest fire ! 
Nor any trodden way of helpful folk 
Is here ; nor saving hands of help and care ; 
Protection none, nor mercy ; and all vain 
The cry for respite ; law-obeying heavens 



136 MONTE ROSA. 

And ordered winds must keep their courses sure, 
Though half the sphere fell to their sightless 

rage. 
In vain ! men's late repentance, that as fools 
They left the peaceful fields, where all the land 
Lay safe before their feet, to tempt this rock, 
And try conclusions in this wilderness, 
Against the mateless forces of roused Earth. 
In vain the stifled outcry of their hearts, 
" Spare, Nature, spare ! dear Mother, spare ! 

Call off 
These airy murderers whose lightest sport 
It is to slay us, Nature ! even in our prime." 
But cold and storm hear nothing ! Human 

hands 
Must save, or death will sing his paean on the 

slain. 
Another Swiss descends in that long grave, 
And working like a madman recklessly 
Cleaves the last obstacle, then twines the rope 



THE DESCENT. 137 

About the unconscious body, giving sign 

To raise all gently. So again above 

They draw their speechless comrade in sad case 

A woful mockery of that blithe mate 

Who passed this way at morn so buoyant, bold, 

Now by such savage handling left in pause 

Upon the dreadful threshold, which once crossed, 

Recrossed is nevermore ; — him they salute 

As those about to die salute the dead. 

What boots it now that heedless Nature shows 
Her utmost grandeurs with an artist's skill, 
If tented on the radiant highlands Death 
Keeps his black camp, himself a robber knight, 
That with his cruel troopers scours the land ; 
Nor gives to harmless travelers any peace 
By day or night, though traveling carefully. 
But one he flings at from the shelving crags, 
Another clutches through a swathing fog, 
Or skulking in the glacier plucks a third 



138 



MONTE ROSA. 



To dripping dungeons foul with dead men's 

bones ; 
Or with swift, snowy minions whirling down 
Bears off whole comradeships of lusty men 

To cells of silence whence no ransom buvs. 

*/ 

Yet oft the bandit fails, outwitted oft 
By wilier human cunning, or o'erborne 
By bolder deed; so here he springs his trap 
And takes no prey, for that a spark of life 
Remains unquenched, a feeble pulse, a trace 
Of breathing, small enough, but still enough 
To keep life's sluggish current to its flow. 
For now all hastily untiring hands 
Afford life's ministries, and kindly rough 
Recall faint tint of blood to those pleached lips, 
Bring back the fuller pulse, the stronger breath, 
Till saved their friend sits up, he speaks, he 

lives, 
And that fell danger baffled slinks away. 



THE DESCENT. 139 

But deadly perils still a howling pack 
Bark close around their heels, as once again 
They strike the downward way ; the drifted 

snow, 
The hidden track, the muffling fog, the cold, 
And landmarks all invisible ; besides 
Their saved companion's strength but half re- 
gained 
Asks careful journeying that hinders speed. 
They crawl where scarce the carrier-pigeon's 

wing 
Could over-haste their course ; and surly Day 
Strides onward toward his western caves; all 

things 
They need ; assistance, strength, good cheer, new 

life. 
Will not some helper come ? Will never snows 
Have end ? Will never storm draw off, and 

clouds 
Melt into native nothingness? Is there 



140 MONTE ROSA. 

No mercy stealing out of heaven to bring 
Them rescue ? Now that earthly help but fails, 
And wearied guides trudge on so heavily! 
Forgotten are all words of merriment 
As they press on, — unhappy, listless, slow, 
Fearful of some yet darker fate to fall. 

But storms hold not forever ; and at last 

This tempest falters, parts its thinning mists, 

Calls in its winds, binds back the pelting sleet, 

Rolls off the gathered cohorts of thick cloud 

That linger low and long in leaden folds 

Upon gray Rosa's summits ; reappears 

The courtly company of kingly hills, 

So grand, so pure, so robed in innocence, 

So like a royal murderer's lily hands 

When in sweet morning dew washed stainless 

clean 
After night's tragedy is done and hid. 
And now returns the wonder-working Sun, 



THE DESCENT. 141 

Divine life-giver marvelous, and pours 

His slanting gold athwart the wintry wolds, 

And o'er the distant hill-sides soft and brown, 

Where lie kind homes, and happy men go on 

To peaceful evening tasks with painless thoughts ; 

And on the Gorner glacier, far below, 

Are moving forms, small as the valiant wren, 

But moving hitherward, some kindlier souls 

Come out to bring the hard-pressed wanderers 

Their sorely-needed succor ere they die. 

Now leap all hearts, as if Apollo came 

And breathed his godhood's force upon their 

limbs, 
And wrought an ancient miracle within ; 
That strong and light of foot they push their 

steps 
Down the huge mountain bosses, all alive ; 
And even their much-hurt comrade, limping on, 
Seems filled with wondrous vigor, and restored, 
Like half-dead Grecian heroes whom the god 



142 MONTE ROSA. 

Snatched from the press of battle and made 

whole ; 
Now many a safe glissade at coasting speed 
Makes fleet their progress down the hardening 

slopes, 
And gravitation, like a guardian nurse 
Holding small hands, lets down their lengthened 

steps, 
While blazes glorious sunset overhead, 
Smiting the mountains into waves of fire. 

So ever flitting, the soft-footed Hours 
Bring home the doughty mountaineers unslain, 
Beneath the deepening twilight, weary, slow, 
But, since they foiled great peril, bold of mien ; 
Though gratefully as ne'er believed they stride 
The foot- worn threshold of the low-browed inn 
Upon high Riffel's forehead, whence at dawn 
They sped away so flush and stout of heart, 
As seems some dreamy untold ages since, 



THE DESCENT. 143 

So deep a gulf has rare experience 
Thrust 'twixt linked morn and eve. Then rest- 
ing here 
Within the cozy guest-room they recount 
Their dread adventure to deep-listening ears, 
Still heightening every danger now surpassed, 
And fain to tell the grandeurs of the way. 
But these will not rehearse themselves in words ; 
The visual dream transcending frail report 
Remains a treasure-trove, a fairy gold 
Hid in the loneliest caverns of shy thought, 
Not hoarded yet unshared; for none but he 
Whose startled eyes have seen can guess the 

sight 
That rises like a mirage, heavenly clear, 
Upon the inner vision, undefiled, 
Of phantom peaks dim with the silver light, 
Of blinding snow-fields roofed with sapphire 

skies, 
Of emerald pastures pierced by glaciers cold, 



144 MONTE ROSA. 

Of wrinkled crags sad with corroding years, 
With streams of misty amethyst between, 
Crowding the dream-horizon with such pomp 
And wondrous pageantry as dwarfs the real 
And living world to thinnest fantasy, 
In face of those more regal realms. Alas ! 
For with all comes deep wistfulness and pain 
That such unwasted grandeurs still should stand 
To bless beholders with unrivaled joy, 
And we not there to see them all our days. 



V. 

PULVIS ET UMBRA. 

So Monte Rosa stands, and so has stood 
More years than there are needles on the pine ; 
And so may further stand unspent more years 
Than there are crystals in her banks of snow ; 
But still the wolfish hours shall gnaw her crags, 
The tireless elements that carved her symmetry 
Tear at her spires, nor heed that driving rain, 
Sleet, cold, sand-bearing wind, and sunshine's 

kiss, 
Or lightning's blow but spoil what once they 

sped. 

The riving rock continually wastes, 

The mount shall sink to hill, the hill to mound, 

The oak shall grow where once the glacier 

groaned, 
10 



146 MONTE ROSA. 

And where snow sparkled shall the snow-drop 

star, 
Chamois shall yield to sheep, and all to time; 
The tribes of beast and men lie down to sleep, 
A general sleep unquestioning, and earth 
As lifeless nod about the cooling sun 
As does the half -seen moon round parent earth ; 
For all things haste to changing not to end : 
One cycle dawns, but treading on its heel 
A stronger cycle thrusts it quickly forth, 
To be in turn left dying by a third ; 
Or rather is no cycle but one time, 
Whose unit is eternity, of which 
The minutes grow to hours, the hours to days, 
And these to months, which swell to rapid years, 
Or loitering centuries that run their tale, 
And tortoise race to such high numerals 
As e'en to think of drugs man's memory, 
Like poppy or mandragora ; a mote 
He seems in such deep reckonings, a breath, 



PULVIS ET UMBRA, 147 

A microscopic atom, scarcely more 
Than that discerned bacterium that rolls 
And finds an ocean in the film of dew 
Contained between the close-pressed lenses, held 
Beneath the powerful lens of some shrewd man 
Of science, searching long to find the start 
And genesis of being in the least. 
So goeth all things, nothing finds its end 
Save in a new beginning which grows old, 
And endlessly transforms itself to new. 
And this our mountain, in whose shadow we 
Have found our pleasure, yields her majesty 
To that great sweep of universal law 
By which she grew, which brings her to her 

death. 
And who shall say what lies beyond save this : 
That some good future issuing from the mists, 
And no less gracious, though to us unknown, 
May follow with new wonders, splendor, strength, 
Such that we well might grieve most bitterly 



148 MONTE ROSA. 

Should we not be to see it in its prime ; 
But there we cannot follow, even on fancy's 

wing, 
For now we stand upon the outmost rim 
Of matter vague, eternal, infinite, 
And have no chart across its trackless lea. 






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